QED vacuum fluctuations and induced electric dipole moment of the neutron

Abstract

Quantum fluctuations in the QED vacuum generate non-linear effects, such as peculiar induced electromagnetic fields. In particular, we show here that an electrically neutral particle, possessing a magnetic dipole moment, develops an induced electric dipole-type moment with unusual angular dependence, when immersed in a quasistatic, constant external electric field. The calculation of this effect is done in the framework of the Euler-Heisenberg effective QED Lagrangian, corresponding to the weak field asymptotic expansion of the effective action to one-loop order. It is argued that the neutron might be a good candidate to probe this signal of non-linearity in QED.

A misprint has been corrected, and three new references have been added

References in corpus (7)

• An Improved Experimental Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Neutron
• Nonlinear collective effects in photon-photon and photon-plasma interactions
• Plans for a Neutron EDM Experiment at SNS
• Non-perturbative vacuum-polarization effects in proton-laser collisions
• Vacuum Birefringence in a Rotating Magnetic Field
• Large orders in strong-field QED
• Birefringence and non-transversality of light propagation in an ultra-strongly magnetized vacuum

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Some aspects of an induced electric dipole moment in rotating and nonrotating frames
• Enhancement of annihilation cross sections by electric interactions between the antineutron and the field of a large nucleus