We consider the quantum Hall effect in quantum electrodynamics and find a deviation from the quantum mechanical prediction for the Hall conductivity due to radiative antiscreening of electric charge in an external magnetic field. A weak universal dependence of the von Klitzing constant on the magnetic field strength, which can possibly be observed in a dedicated experiment, is predicted.
Many-body systems with chiral fermions can exhibit novel transport phenomena that violate parity and time reversal symmetries, such as the chiral magnetic effect, the anomalous Hall effect, and the anomalous generation of charge. Based on the Maxwell-Chern-Simons electrodynamics, we examine some electromagnetic and optical properties of such systems including the electrostatics, the magnetostatics, the propagation of electromagnetic waves, the novel optical effects, etc.
We study higher-form symmetries in a low-energy effective theory of a massless axion coupled with a photon in $(3+1)$ dimensions. It is shown that the higher-form symmetries of this system are accompanied by a semistrict 3-group (2-crossed module) structure, which can be found by the correlation functions of symmetry generators of the higher-form symmetries. We argue that the Witten effect and anomalous Hall effect in the axion electrodynamics can be described in terms of 3-group transformations.
We show the realization of axion electrodynamics within the Dual Chiral Density Wave phase of dense quark matter in the presence of a magnetic field. The system exhibits an anomalous dissipantionless Hall current perpendicular to the magnetic field and an anomalous electric charge density. Connection to topological insulators and 3D optical lattices, as well as possible implications for heavy-ion collisions and neutron stars are outlined.
We consider the relationship between the tight-binding Hamiltonian of the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms with nearest neighbor hopping only and the 2+1 dimensional Hamiltonian of quantum electrodynamics which follows in the continuum limit. We pay particular attention to the symmetries of the free Dirac fermions including spatial inversion, time reversal, charge conjugation and chirality. We illustrate the power of such a mapping by considering the effect of the possible symmetry breaking which corresponds to the creation of a finite Dirac mass, on various optical properties…
We introduce a Lorentz-symmetry violating extended quantum electrodynamics (QED) which preserves gauge symmetry. The extended fermionic sector can radiatively induce an extended effective action which simultaneously displays the same electromagnetic terms present in the Carroll-Field-Jackiw, Myers-Pospelov and Aether actions.
We study the Casimir effect in axion electrodynamics. A finite $θ$-term affects the energy dispersion relation of photon if $θ$ is time and/or space dependent. We focus on a special case with linearly inhomogeneous $θ$ along the $z$-axis. Then we demonstrate that the Casimir force between two parallel plates perpendicular to the $z$-axis can be either attractive or repulsive, dependent on the gradient of $θ$. We call this repulsive component in the Casimir force induced by inhomogeneous $θ$ the anomalous Casimir effect.
In this paper we compute the high-temperature effective Lagrangian for the quantum electrodynamics defined in the framework of Very Special Relativity (VSR). The main aspect of the VSR setting is that it modifies the gauge invariance, admitting now different types of interactions appearing in a nonlocal form. In order to explore the richness of these new couplings, we employ the usual Matsubara imaginary-time formalism to evaluate the effective Lagrangian at one and two-loop order. We illustrate the leading VSR Lorentz violation modifications by computing high-temperature internal energy densi…
Some of the basic notions of nonlinear optics are summarized and then applied to the case of the Dirac vacuum, as described by the Heisenberg-Euler effective one-loop Lagrangian. The theoretical and experimental basis for the appearance of nonlinear optical phenomena, such as the Kerr effect, Cotton-Mouton effect, and four-wave mixing are discussed. Further effects due to more exotic assumptions on the structure of spacetime, such as gravitational curvature and the topology of the Casimir vacuum are also presented.
We consider a CPT-noninvariant scalar model and a modified version of quantum electrodynamics with an additional photonic Chern-Simons-like term in the action. In both cases, the Lorentz violation traces back to a spacelike background vector. The effects of the modified field equations and dispersion relations on the kinematics and dynamics of decay processes are discussed, first for the simple scalar model and then for modified quantum electrodynamics. The decay widths for electron Cherenkov radiation in modified quantum electrodynamics and for photon triple-splitting in the corresponding low…
We show that in the framework of noncommutative classical electrodynamics Cherenkov radiation is permitted in vacuum and we explicitly compute its spectrum at first order in the noncommutative parameter. We discuss the phenomenological impact of the merge of this new analysis with the old results of the substantial modification to the spectrum of the synchrotron radiation obtained in P.Castorina, A.Iorio and D.Zappala, Phys. Rev. D 69 (2004)065008. We propose to consider the pulsars' radiation spectrum - due to its very strong magnetic field - to investigate these Lorentz violating effects in …
We consider the quantum electrodynamic corrections to the two-stream instability. We find these corrections vanish at first order unless a guiding magnetic field $\mathbf{B}_0$ is considered. With respect to the classical version of the instability, quantum electrodynamic effects reduce the most unstable wave vector and its growth rate by a factor $\sqrt{1+ξ}$, with $ξ= \fracα{9π} (B_0/B_{cr})^2$, where $α$ is the fine-structure constant and $B_{cr}$ the Schwinger critical magnetic field. Although derived for a cold system, these results are valid for the kinetic case. The results are valid in…
Electromagnetic effects are increasingly being accounted for in lattice quantum chromodynamics computations. Because of their long-range nature, they lead to large finite-size effects over which it is important to gain analytical control. Nonrelativistic effective field theories provide an efficient tool to describe these effects. Here we argue that some care has to be taken when applying these methods to quantum electrodynamics in a finite volume.
Effective coupling constant in quantum electrodynamics is investigated. A pole appears in the effective coupling constant for the space-like momentum if it is calculated by perturbation. The pole can be eliminated by the analytic regularization. For QED the effective coupling constant is written in terms of the scale parameter, $Λ$, having the dimension of mass as in the case of QCD. $Λ$ is determined by comparing with the experimental data. The calculated result agrees with experiment with $Λ\approx 1.64\times 10^{47}$ GeV; it is very large but much smaller than the mass scale of Landau ghost…
The angular dependence of the differential cross section of unpolarized light-by-light scattering summed over final polarizations is the same in any low-energy effective theory of quantum electrodynamics and also in Born-Infeld electrodynamics. In this paper we derive general expressions for polarization-dependent low-energy scattering amplitudes, including a hypothetical parity-violating situation. These are evaluated for quantum electrodynamics with charged scalar or spinor particles, which give strikingly different polarization effects. Ordinary quantum electrodynamics is found to exhibit r…
We introduce a new method to include condensates in the light-cone Hamiltonian. By using a Gaussian approximation to the ordinary vacuum in a theory close to the light front, we derive an effective Hamiltonian on the light cone, which has new terms reflecting the nontriviality of the vacuum. We demonstrate our method for scalar $ϕ^4$-theory and the massive Schwinger model.
The new derivation of the equation of the spin precession is given for a particle possessing electric and magnetic dipole moments. Contributions from classical electrodynamics and from the Thomas effect are explicitly separated. A fully covariant approach is used. The final equation is expressed in a very simple form in terms of the fields in the instantaneously accompanying frame. The Lorentz transformations of the electric and magnetic dipole moments and of the spin are derived from basic equations of classical electrodynamics. For this purpose, the Maxwell equations in matter are used and t…
The effective field theory approach to high temperature field theory can be used to study the phase transition in theories with spontaneously broken symmetry. I construct a sequence of two effective three--dimensional field theories which are valid on successively longer distance scales for a specific model: $N$ charged scalars coupled to a U(1) gauge field. The resulting effective Lagrangian can be used to investigate the phase transition, in particular the order of the phase transition as a function of $N$, using lattice simulations.
We compute one-loop effective action of magnetic monopole in three-dimensional electrodynamics of massless bosons and fermions and find that it contains an infrared logarithm. So, when the number of massless matter species is sufficiently large, monopoles are suppressed and in the weak coupling limit charged particles are unconfined. This result provides some support to gauge theories of high-temperature superconductors. It also provides a mechanism by which interlayer tunneling of excitations with one unit of the ordinary electric charge can be suppressed while that of a doubly charged object…
The effect of short wavelength quantum electrodynamic (QED) correction on plasma-wave propagation is investigated. The effect on plasma oscillations and on electromagnetic waves in an unmagnetized as well as a magnetized plasma is investigated. The effects of the short wavelength QED corrections are most significant for plasma oscillations and for extraordinary modes. In particular, the QED correction allow plasma oscillations to propagate, and the extra-ordinary mode looses its stop band. The significance of our results is discussed.
We study the screening of static electric fields in massless scalar electrodynamics at high temperature and zero chemical potential. Effective field theory methods are used to separate the contributions from the momentum scales T and eT to the electric screening mass. The effects of the distance scale 1/T are encoded in the parameters of an effective three-dimensional field theory. The parameters of the effective Lagrangian can be written as a power series in e^2. The contribution to physical quantities from the scale 1/eT can be calculated from perturbation theory in the effective theory and …
We present the extended electrodynamics in the presence of the axion and dark photon. We derive the extended versions of Maxwell's equations and dark Maxwell's equations (for both massive and massless dark photons) as well as the wave equations. We discuss the implications of this extended electrodynamics including the enhanced effects in the particle conversions under the external magnetic or dark magnetic field. We also discuss the recently reported anomaly in the redshifted 21cm spectrum using the extended electrodynamics.
We discuss recent progress in various problems related to bound-state quantum electrodynamics: the bound-electron g factor, two-loop self-energy corrections and the laser-dressed Lamb shift. The progress relies on various advances in the bound-state formalism, including ideas inspired by effective field theories such as Nonrelativistic Quantum Electrodynamics. Radiative corrections in dynamical processes represent a promising field for further investigations.
Massless scalar electrodynamics is studied at high temperature and zero chemical potential. I derive the free energy to order $λ^2$, $λe^2$ and $e^4$ by effective field theory methods. The first step consists of the construction of an effective three-dimensional field theory that is valid on distance scales $R\gg 1/T$ and whose parameters can be written as power series in $λ$ and $e^2$. These coupling constants encode the contribution to physical quantities from the scale $T$. The second step is the use of the effective Lagrangian and perturbative calculations yield the contributions to the fr…
Possible Lorentz-violating effects in the cosmic microwave background are studied. We provide a systematic classification of renormalizable and nonrenormalizable operators for Lorentz violation in electrodynamics and use polarimetric observations to search for the associated violations.