Photon-photon scattering: a tutorial

Abstract

Long-established results for the low-energy photon-photon scattering, gamma gamma --> gamma gamma, have recently been questioned. We analyze that claim and demonstrate that it is inconsistent with experience. We demonstrate that the mistake originates from an erroneous manipulation of divergent integrals and discuss the connection with another recent claim about the Higgs decay into two photons. We show a simple way of correctly computing the low-energy gamma gamma scattering.

9 pages, 2 figures; v2: typographical errors corrected in eqs 1, 20, and 21; ref. [23] added

References in corpus (8)

• Higgs Decay to Two Photons
• Note on Higgs Decay into Two Photons $H\to \gamma \gamma$
• Higgs Decay into Two Photons through the W-boson Loop: No Decoupling in the m_W --> 0 Limit
• Higgs Decay into Two Photons, Revisited
• Higgs Decay H -->γγ through a W Loop: Difficulty with Dimensional Regularization
• Comment on H --> gamma gamma and the role of the decoupling theorem and the equivalence theorem
• A Proposal to Measure Photon-Photon Scattering
• Comment on : A Proposal to Measure Photon-Photon Scattering

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• H -> gamma gamma: a Comment on the Indeterminacy of Non-Gauge-Invariant Integrals
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• Cosmological Mass of the Photon and Dark Energy as its Bose-Einstein Condensate in de Sitter Space
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• Cosmological mass of the photon related to Stueckelberg and Higgs mechanisms