On the observation of vacuum birefringence

By T. Heinzl, B. Liesfeld, K. Amthor, H. Schwoerer, R. Sauerbrey, A. Wipf. 2006

228 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We suggest an experiment to observe vacuum birefringence induced by intense laser fields. A high-intensity laser pulse is focused to ultra-relativistic intensity and polarizes the vacuum which then acts like a birefringent medium. The latter is probed by a linearly polarized X-ray pulse. We calculate the resulting ellipticity signal within strong-field QED assuming Gaussian beams. The laser technology required for detecting the signal will be available within the next three years.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Radiation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/774d72cd5a77efbef37f4c101a57404b7b9ea942

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. C. Keitel
2. C. Müller
3. K. Hatsagortsyan
4. A. Piazza
5. A. Ringwald
6. G. Dunne
7. V. Khoze
8. J. Redondo

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. A. Ringwald
2. G. Dunne
3. J. Jaeckel
4. H. Gies
5. Qing-hai Wang
6. C. Keitel
7. C. Müller
8. K. Hatsagortsyan

In Radiation

1. G. Dunne
2. C. Keitel
3. K. Hatsagortsyan
4. Mattias Marklund
5. Padma Kant Shukla

Citations in the corpus

• Extremely high-intensity laser interactions with fundamental quantum systems (2011, background): “The birefringence of the polarized vacuum is exploited in Heinzl et al., 2006 to show that if a linearly-polarized probe x-ray beam (wavelength λp) propagates along a strong optical standing wave, then it emerges from the interaction elliptically polarized with ellipticity ǫ given by ǫ = 2α 15 κ…”
• Worldline instantons and the fluctuation prefactor (2006, background): “It is a prominent example of a wider class of quantum-induced nonlinear electromagnetic effects [28] which can become accessible in current and future strong-field experiments [29, 30, 31].”
• Illuminating the hidden sector of string theory by shining light through a magnetic field (2006, background): “The existence of minicharged particles can be tested [2] by improving the sensitivity of instruments for the detection of vacuum magnetic birefringence and dichroism [1, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30].”
• Measuring vacuum polarization with high-power lasers (2015, unknown): “e two Gaussians zeff. depending on the probe zr,p and pump zr,s Rayleigh lengths. This agrees with the expressions calculated for a monochromatic probe plane wave counterpropagatingwith a Gaussian pump[43] in the limit zr,p → ∞. Polarisation rotation is the macroscopic consequence of coherent polaris”