Analytic results for (Q)ED processes in external fields are limited to a few special cases, such as plane waves. However, the strong focussing of intense laser fields implies a need to go beyond the plane wave model. By exploiting Poincaré symmetry and superintegrability we show how to construct, and solve without approximation, new models of laser-particle interactions. We illustrate the method with a model of a radially polarised (TM) laser beam, for which we exactly determine the classical orbits and quantum wave functions. Including in this way the effects of transverse field structure should improve predictions and analyses for experiments at intense laser facilities.
We derive fully explicit equations of motion, and the associated set of constraints, describing the propagation in a flat space-time of a charged spin-3/2 massive state in a constant electromagnetic background. For this purpose, we provide the Lagrangian for the physical fermionic fields in the first massive level of the open superstring. We first write a compact Lagrangian, allowing a simple derivation of the equations of motion and constraints. Then another one is given that yields directly a decoupled system of equations, though the fields of different spins look coupled at the level of the…
Minimal coupling leads to problems such as loss of causality if one wants to describe charged particles of spin greater than one propagating in a constant electromagnetic background. Regge trajectories in string theory contain such states, so their study may allow us to investigate possible avenues to remedy the pathologies. We present here two explicit forms, related by field redefinitions, of the Lagrangian describing the bosonic states in the first massive level of open superstrings in four dimensions. The first one reduces, when the electromagnetic field is set to zero, to the Fierz-Pauli …
We attempt to evaluate the effective Lagrangian for a classical background field interacting with the vacuum of two quantum fields. The integration of one of the quantum fields in general leads to a non-local term in the effective Lagrangian and thus becomes intractable during the integration of the other quantum field. We show that $ϕF \tilde{K}$ interaction is an exception. We present the complete calculation for the evaluation of the effective Lagrangian for a pseudoscalar field interacting with photons in the presence of a background electromagnetic field. Expression for the probability of…
We discuss our study of QCD in the presence of CP-odd electromagnetic (e.m.) background fields. We investigate the propagation of the CP-odd term from the e.m. sector to the strong sector, inducing an effective $θ$ term. We discuss the method we have used in our lattice QCD simulations, and the results of our analysis, which are relevant to the determination of the effective pseudoscalar QED-QCD interactions. We also explore how these CP-odd e.m. background fields influence the number of the Dirac zero modes in our configurations.
The nonlinear interaction, due to quantum electrodynamical (QED) effects, between two electromagnetic pulses and a radiation gas is investigated. It is found that the governing equations admit both modulational and filamentational instabilities. The instability growth rates are derived, and the results are discussed.
The amplitude for Higgs boson decay into two photons in a homogeneous and time-independent magnetic field is investigated by proper-time regularization in a gauge invariant manner and is found to be singular at large field values. The singularity is caused by the component of the charged vector boson field that is tachyonic in a strong magnetic field. Also tools for the computation of the amplitude in a more general electromagnetic background are developed.
We investigate two flavor QCD in presence of CP-odd electromagnetic background fields and determine, by means of lattice QCD simulations, the induced effective theta term to the first order in the scalar product of E and B. We employ a rooted staggered discretization and study lattice spacings down to 0.1 fm and Goldstone pion masses around 480 MeV. In order to deal with a positive measure, we consider purely imaginary electric fields and real magnetic fields, then exploiting analytic continuation. Our results are relevant to a description of the effective pseudoscalar QED-QCD interactions.
Using the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model in the D0-D4 background, we holographically compute the vacuum decay rate of the Schwinger effect in this model. Our calculation contains the influence of the D0-brane density which could be identified as the $θ$ angle or chiral potential in QCD. Under the strong electromagnetic fields, the instability appears due to the creation of quark-antiquark pairs and the associated decay rate can be obtained by evaluating the imaginary part of the effective Euler-Heisenberg action which is identified as the action of the probe brane with a constant electromagnetic …
When two electromagnetic fields counterpropagate, they are modified due to mutual interaction via the polarised virtual electron-positron states of the vacuum. By studying how photon-photon scattering effects such as birefringence and four-wave mixing evolve as the fields pass through one another, we find a significant increase during overlap. The results have particular relevance for calculations based on a constant field background.
In this work we investigate the quantum theory of light propagating in $D-$dimensional de Sitter spacetimes. To do so, we use the method of dynamic invariants to obtain the solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The quantum behavior of the electromagnetic field in this background is analyzed. As the electromagnetism loses its conformality in $D\neq4$, we point that there will be particle production and comoving objects will feel a Bunch-Davies thermal bath. This may become important in extra dimension physics and raises the intriguing possibility that precise measurements of the …
Electromagnetic waves in a dynamical axion background exhibit superluminal group velocities at high frequencies and instabilities at low frequencies, altering how photons propagate through space. Local disturbances propagate causally, but unlike in ordinary Maxwell theory, propagation occurs inside as well as on the lightcone. For the unstable modes, the energy density in the electromagnetic field grows exponentially along timelike displacements. In this paper we derive retarded Green functions in axion electrodynamics in various limits and study the time-domain properties of propagating signa…
In the in-out formalism we advance a method of the inverse scattering matrix for calculating effective actions in pure magnetic field backgrounds. The one-loop effective actions are found in a localized magnetic field of Sauter type and approximately in a general magnetic field by applying the uniform semiclassical approximation. The effective actions exhibit the electromagnetic duality between a constant electric field and a constant magnetic field and between $E(x) = E sech^2 (x/L)$ and $B(x) = B sech^2 (x/L)$.
The exact solutions of the wave equation for arbitrary spin particles in the field of the soliton-like electric impulse were obtained. The differential probability of pair production of particles by electromagnetic fields has been evaluated on the basis of the exact solutions. As a particular case, the particle pair producing in the constant and uniform electric field were studied.
Nonuniform background electromagnetic fields, once implemented in lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations of hadronic systems, provide a means to constrain a large class of electromagnetic properties of hadrons and nuclei, from their higher electromagnetic moments and charge radii to their electromagnetic form factors. We show how nonuniform fields can be constructed on a periodic hypercubic lattice under certain conditions and determine the precise form of the background U(1) gauge links that must be imposed on the quantum chromodynamics gauge-field configurations to maintain periodicity.…
Resonant production of millicharged scalars in $k^2>0$ electromagnetic wave background
Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences（俄罗斯科学院核物理研究所）；Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University（莫斯科国立大学物理系）；Branch of Lomonosov Moscow State University in Sarov（萨罗夫莫斯科国立大学分院）
In the second part of this series we apply the ``string-inspired'' technique to the calculation of one-loop amplitudes involving both vectors and axialvectors, as well as a general constant electromagnetic background field. The vector-axialvector two-point function in a constant field is calculated explicitly.
The response of the hot QCD medium in the presence of external time dependent electromagnetic fields has been studied within the relativistic Boltzmann transport theory. The impact of the time dependence of the electromagnetic fields and collisional aspects of the medium to the induced electric and Hall current densities has been explored. The non-equilibrium momentum distribution of degrees of freedom has been obtained in the presence of space-time varying electromagnetic fields. Further, the analysis has been extended to an anisotropic QCD medium while incorporating the in-medium interaction…
The mixing of photons with light pseudoscalars in the presence of external electromagnetic fields has been used extensively to search for axion-like-particles. A similar effect for dark photon propagating states is usually not considered due to the Landau-Yang theorem. We point out that mixing between photon and dark photon propagating states in background electromagnetic fields can indeed occur, in non-linear QED, through a four-photon vertex by integrating out the electron box diagram. Starting from the Schwinger Lagrangian, we derive the equations of motion for dark photons interacting with…
The feasibility of obtaining exact analytical results in the realm of QED in the presence of a background electromagnetic field is almost exclusively limited to a few tractable cases, where the Dirac equation in the corresponding background field can be solved analytically. This circumstance has restricted, in particular, the theoretical analysis of QED processes in intense laser fields to within the plane-wave approximation even at those high intensities, achievable experimentally only by tightly focusing the laser energy in space. Here, within the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) or eikonal a…
The quantum field theory in the presence of classical background electromagnetic fields is reviewed. We give a pedagogical introduction to the Feynman-Furry method of describing non-perturbative interactions with very strong electromagnetic fields. A particular emphasis is given to the case of the plane-wave electromagnetic field for which the charged particles' wave functions and propagators are presented. Some general features of quantum processes proceeding in the intense electromagnetic background are argued. We also discuss the possibilities of searching new physics through the investigat…
The equation is considered for a composite scalar particle with polarizabilities in an external quantized electromagnetic plane wave. This equation is reduced to a system of equations for infinite number of interacting oscillators. After diagonalization, we come to equations for free oscillators. As a result, exact solutions of the equation for a particle are found in a plane quantized electromagnetic wave of the arbitrary polarization. As a particular case, the solution for monochromatic electromagnetic waves is considered. The relativistic coherent states of a particle are constructed in the…
We derive the quantum kinetic equations for massive and massless quarks coupled with the background chromo-electromagnetic fields from the Wigner-function approach with the $\hbar$ expansion and effective power-counting scheme. For each case, one obtains coupled color-singlet and color-octet kinetic equations, which also involve the scalar and axial-vector components for the charge and spin transport. These kinetic equations delineate entangled evolution of the corresponding distribution functions decomposed in color space. At weak coupling, we derive the close form of the color-singlet kineti…
We study the electromagnetic vertex function of a neutrino that propagates in an electron background in the presence of a static magnetic field. The structure of the vertex function under the stated conditions is determined and it is written down in terms of a minimal and complete set of tensors. The one-loop expressions for all the form factors is given, up to terms that are linear in the magnetic field, and the approximate integral formulas that hold in the long wavelength limit are obtained. We discuss the physical interpretation of some of the form factors and their relation with the conce…
The decay of a massive pseudoscalar, scalar and U(1) boson into an electron-positron pair in the presence of strong electromagnetic backgrounds is calculated. Of particular interest is the constant-crossed-field limit, relevant for experiments that aim to measure high-energy axion-like-particle conversion into electron-positron pairs in a magnetic field. The total probability depends on the quantum nonlinearity parameter - a product of field and lightfront momentum invariants. Depending on the seed particle mass, different decay regimes are identified. In the below-threshold case, we find the …
Within the recently developed Lorentz invariant approach to neutrino spin and flavour oscillations the following four new effects are discussed: 1) neutrino spin oscillations in different electromagnetic field configurations, 2) neutrino spin precession and oscillations stimulated by weak interaction with background matter without presence of electromagnetic fields, 3) the significant shift of neutrino spin and flavour oscillation resonances by matter moving with relativistic speed, if compared with the case of non-moving matter, 4) the new mechanism of electromagnetic radiation by neutrino mo…
Exact solution of the DeWitt-Brehme-Hobbs equation in copropagating electromagnetic and gravitational waves
Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics（马克斯·普朗克核物理研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester（罗切斯特大学物理与天文系）；Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Torino & INFN, Sezione di Torino（都灵大学物理系及意大利国家核物理研究院都灵分部）；Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester（罗切斯特大学激光能源实验室）
Aspects of the dilepton spectrum in heavy-ion collisions are discussed, with special emphasis on using lattice computations to guide the phenomenology of finite temperature hadronic matter. The background rates for continuum dileptons expected in forthcoming experiments are summarised. Properly augmented by data from ongoing measurements at HERA, these rates will serve as a calibrating background for QGP searches. Recent results on the temperature dependence of the hadronic spectrum obtained in lattice computations below the deconfinement transition are summarised. Light vector meson masses ar…
We discuss phenomenological implications of the anomalous transport induced by the scale anomaly in QCD coupled to an electromagnetic (EM) field, based on a dilaton effective theory. The scale anomalous current emerges in a way perfectly analogous to the conformal transport current induced in a curved spacetime background, or the Nernst current in Dirac and Weyl semimetals -- both current forms are equivalent by a "Weyl transformation". We focus on a spatially homogeneous system of QCD hadron phase, which is expected to be created after the QCD phase transition and thermalization. We find that…
Conformal invariance for bosonic strings in time-dependent backgrounds of graviton, dilaton and Kalb-Ramond field is obtained by imposing Weyl-beta functions to be homogeneous in time, to all orders in $α^{'}$. This construction is possible in any target space dimension, as a result of the non-trivial background configurations. The electromagnetic effects of the antisymmetric tensor field, when coupled to an Abelian (electromagnetic) gauge field, are discussed in the framework of a four-dimensional Minkowski Universe, for concreteness. Non-trivial optical activity is demonstrated, which consti…
A new class of exact solutions of the bound Dirac and bound Klein Gordon equations in non co propagating plane waves is found. The solutions are based on the physical principle of maintaining local gauge invariance in the Furry picture Lagrangian when N external fields can undergo independent gauge transformations. The solutions can be expressed in terms of the Hamilton Jacobi action and a gauge invariant effective particle momentum in the ensemble of external fields. Rotations of the effective particle momentum, which preserve local gauge invariance, are introduced into the action using matri…
The low-energy structure of hadrons can be described systematically using effective field theory, and the parameters of the effective theory can be determined from lattice QCD computations. Recent work, however, points to inconsistencies between the background field method in lattice QCD and effective field theory matching conditions. We show that the background field problem necessitates inclusion of operators related by equations of motion. In the presence of time-dependent electromagnetic fields, for example, such operators modify Green's functions, thereby complicating the isolation of had…
We consider dark matter which have non-zero electromagnetic form factors like electric/magnetic dipole moments and anapole moment for fermionic dark matter and Rayleigh form factor for scalar dark matter. We consider dark matter mass $m_χ> \cal{ O}({\rm MeV})$ and put constraints on their mass and electromagnetic couplings from CMB and LSS observations. Fermionic dark matter with non-zero electromagnetic form factors can annihilate to $e^+ e^-$ and scalar dark matter can annihilate to $2γ$ at the time of recombination and distort the CMB. We analyze dark matter with multipole moments with Plan…
We argue that electromagnetic decays of energetic unflavoured neutral mesons, notably $η$, mis-identified as single photons due to granularity of the electromagnetic calorimeter might create bump-like features in the diphoton invariant mass spectrum at different energies, including 750 GeV. We discuss what kind of additional analysis can exclude or confirm this hypothesis.
Chiral perturbation theory makes definitive predictions for the extrinsic behavior of hadrons in external electric and magnetic fields. Near the chiral limit, the electric and magnetic polarizabilities of pions, kaons, and nucleons are determined in terms of a few well-known parameters. In this limit, hadrons become quantum mechanically diffuse as polarizabilities scale with the inverse square-root of the quark mass. In some cases, however, such predictions from chiral perturbation theory have not compared well with experimental data. Ultimately we must turn to first principles numerical simul…
Certain models involving ALPs (axion-like-particles) allow for the coupling of scalars and pseudoscalars to fermions. A derivation of the total rate for production of massive scalars and pseudoscalars by an electron in a monochromatic, circularly-polarised electromagnetic background is presented. In addition, a derivation and the total rate for the decay of massive scalars and pseudoscalars into electron-positron pairs in the same electromagnetic background is given. We conclude by approximating the total yield of ALP production for a typical laser-particle experimental scenario.
We present a powerful method for exploring various processes in the presence of strong external fields and matter. The method implies utilization of the exact solutions of the modified Dirac equations which contain the effective potentials accounting for the influences of external electromagnetic fields and matter on particles. We briefly discuss the basics of the method and its applications to studies of different processes, including a recently proposed new mechanism of radiation by neutrinos and electrons moving in matter (the spin light of the neutrino and electron). In view of a recent "p…
We calculate the correction to the neutrino electromagnetic vertex due to background of electrons in a large class of models, as the supersymmetric model with explicit breaking of R-parity, where charged scalar bosons couple to leptons and which are able to provide an astrophysically interesting value for the neutrino magnetic (electric) moment, $μ_ν\sim 10^{-12}\:μ_B$. We show that the medium contribution to the chirality flipping magnetic (electric) dipole moment is not significant, however a new chirality flipping, but helicity conserving, term arises. It signals the presence of ${\cal CP}$…
We investigate the self-energies of particles in an external magnetic field $B$. The dependence is generally of the type $\sqrt{P(B)}$ with $P$ a polynomial in $B$ and the participating masses. The non-analytic point depends on the mass and charge constellations, is unproblematic for stable particles but constrains the linear energy shift approximation for resonances. We calculate the $B$ dependent self-energies of the nucleon and $Δ(1232)$-isobar in the SU(2) covariant chiral perturbation theory and outline a way to obtain finite volume corrections to the nucleon anomalous magnetic moment wit…
In the inflationary scenarios suggested by string theory, the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field can be amplified by the time-evolution of the dilaton background, and can grow large enough to explain both the origin of the cosmic magnetic fields and of the observed CMB anisotropy. The normalization of the perturbation spectrum is fixed, and implies a relation between the perturbation amplitude at the COBE scale and the spectral index $n$. Working within a generic two-parameter family of backgrounds, a large scale anisotropy $ΔT/T\simeq 10^{-5}$ is found to correspond to a spectra…
Electromagnetic emission rates from a thermalized hadronic gas are important for the interpretation of dilepton signals from heavy-ion collisions. Although there is a consensus in the literature about rates for a pure meson gas, qualitative differences appear with a finite baryon density. We show this to be essentially due to the way in which the pi-N background is treated in regards to the nucleon resonances. Using a background constrained by unitarity and broken chiral symmetry, it is emphasized that the thermalized hadronic gas can be considered dilute.
The electromagnetic current operator of a composite system must be a relativistic vector operator satisfying current conservation, cluster separability and the condition that interactions between the constituents do not renormalize the total electric charge. Assuming that these interactions are described in the framework of relativistic quantum mechanics of systems with a fixed number of particles we explicitly construct the current operators satisfying the above properties in cases of two and three particles and prove that solutions exist for any number of particles. The consideration is esse…
We investigate the electromagnetic cascade initiated by injection of very high energy photons in the early Universe and calculate the cascade spectrum by solving a set of Boltzmann equations numerically. In the calculation we take account of Compton scattering off the background electrons and pair creation off the background nucleons as well as photon-photon processes and inverse Compton scattering. We also apply our cascade spectrum to the big bang nucleosynthesis with photo-dissociation processes due to heavy unstable particles and obtain the constraint on their lifetime and abundance.
We show that the electromagnetic superconductivity of vacuum in strong magnetic field background is consistent with the Vafa-Witten theorem because the charged vector meson condensates lock relevant internal global symmetries of QCD with the electromagnetic gauge group.
We present a reformulation of axion modified electrodynamics with all modifications redefined within the constitutive relations between the D,H,B and E fields. This allows the interpretation of the axion induced background bound charge, polarization current and background polarization and magnetization satisfying the charge-current continuity equation. This representation is of similar form to photon sector odd-parity Lorentz invariance violating background fields. We show that when a DC B-field is applied an oscillating background polarization is induced at a frequency equivalent to the axion…
