Propagation of light in area metric backgrounds

Abstract

The propagation of light in area metric spacetimes, which naturally emerge as refined backgrounds in quantum electrodynamics and quantum gravity, is studied from first principles. In the geometric-optical limit, light rays are found to follow geodesics in a Finslerian geometry, with the Finsler norm being determined by the area metric tensor. Based on this result, and an understanding of the non-linear relation between ray vectors and wave covectors in such refined backgrounds, we study light deflection in spherically symmetric situations, and obtain experimental bounds on the non-metricity of spacetime in the solar system.

18pp, no figures, Journal version

References in corpus (9)

• General Very Special Relativity is Finsler Geometry
• Planck-scale modified dispersion relations and Finsler geometry
• Non-Metric Gravity I: Field Equations
• Deciphering the properties of the medium produced in heavy ion collisions at RHIC by a pQCD analysis of quenched large $p_{\perp }$ ${\pi }^0$ spectra
• Non-Metric Gravity II: Spherically Symmetric Solution, Missing Mass and Redshifts of Quasars
• Non-metric gravity: A status report
• Geometry for the accelerating universe
• Radiation-dominated area metric cosmology
• Brans-Dicke geometry

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Birefringence in pseudo-Finsler spacetimes
• Radar orthogonality and radar length in Finsler and metric spacetime geometry
• Quantization of general linear electrodynamics
• Observables from spherically symmetric modified dispersion relations
• Quantum Energy Inequalities in Pre-Metric Electrodynamics
• Remarks on the algebraic structure of (2, 2) double forms
• Etherington duality breaking: gravitational lensing in non-metric spacetimes versus intrinsic alignments
• Electromagnetic and gravitational interactions from Lagrangian mechanics
• Loop Special Relativity: Kaluza-Klein area metric as a line element for stringy events
• Propagation features of Lorentz-violating electrodynamics
• Kinetic gases in static spherically symmetric modified dispersion relations