Measuring the magnetic birefringence of vacuum: the PVLAS experiment
arXiv:1201.2309 · doi:10.1142/S0217751X12600172
Abstract
We describe the principle and the status of the PVLAS experiment which is presently running at the INFN section of Ferrara, Italy, to detect the magnetic birefringence of vacuum. This is related to the QED vacuum structure and can be detected by measuring the ellipticity acquired by a linearly polarized light beam propagating through a strong magnetic field. Such an effect is predicted by the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian. The method is also sensitive to other hypothetical physical effects such as axion-like particles and in general to any fermion/boson millicharged particle. Here we report on the construction of our apparatus based on a high finesse () Fabry-Perot cavity and two 0.9 m long 2.5 T permanent dipole rotating magnets, and on the measurements performed on a scaled down test setup. With the test setup we have improved by about a factor 2 the limit on the parameter describing non linear electrodynamic effects in vacuum: T @ 95% c.l.
18 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the QFEXT11 Benasque Conference
References in corpus (11)
- New PVLAS results and limits on magnetically induced optical rotation and ellipticity in vacuum
- Search for axion-like particles using a variable baseline photon regeneration technique
- No light shining through a wall : new results from a photoregeneration experiment
- Polarized Light Propagating in a Magnetic Field as a Probe of Millicharged Fermions
- Search for Stimulated Photon-Photon Scattering in Vacuum
- The BMV experiment : a novel apparatus to study the propagation of light in a transverse magnetic field
- On the Particle Interpretation of the PVLAS Data: Neutral versus Charged Particles
- Search for photon oscillations into massive particles
- Limits on Low Energy Photon-Photon Scattering from an Experiment on Magnetic Vacuum Birefringence
- Detecting photon-photon scattering in vacuum at exawatt lasers
- About the connection between vacuum birefringence and the light-light scattering amplitude
Cited by in corpus (35)
- Strongly interacting photons in one-dimensional continuum
- Dark matter, dark energy, and alternate models: A review
- Measuring Vacuum Polarisation with High Power Lasers
- Anomalous radiative trapping in laser fields of extreme intensity
- Magnetic and electric properties of quantum vacuum
- Vacuum magnetic linear birefringence using pulsed fields: the BMV experiment
- XIPE: the X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer
- Photon polarisation in light-by-light scattering: finite size effects
- Photon-photon scattering in collisions of laser pulses
- Vacuum birefringence in high-energy laser-electron collisions
- Multi-Material Coatings with Reduced Thermal Noise
- Vacuum birefringence detection in all-optical scenarios
- Vacuum high harmonic generation in the shock regime
- Strong-Field QED and High Power Lasers
- Interaction of photons traversing a slowly varying electromagnetic background
- Self-induced mode mixing of ultraintense lasers in vacuum
- Optical Kerr effect in vacuum
- Exploring circular polarization in the CMB due to conventional sources of cosmic birefringence
- Circular polarization of the cosmic microwave background from vector and tensor perturbations
- On the Heisenberg limit for detecting vacuum birefringence
- Magneto-optic effects of the Cosmic Microwave Background
- On refractive processes in strong laser field quantum electrodynamics
- Probing Axions via Light Circular Polarization and Event Horizon Telescope
- The axion-photon mixing in non-linear electrodynamic scenarios
- On the observability of field-assisted birefringent Delbrück scattering
- Anomalous character of the axion-photon coupling in a magnetic field distorted by a pp-wave gravitational background
- Examining axion-like particles with superconducting radio-frequency cavity
- Comparative of light propagation in Born-Infeld, Euler-Heisenberg and ModMax nonlinear electrodynamics
- Vacuum superconductivity, conventional superconductivity and Schwinger pair production
- Collective behavior of light in vacuum
- Extended axion electrodynamics: Anomalous dynamo-optical response induced by gravitational pp-waves
- Probing the interference between non-linear, axionic and space-time-anisotropy effects in the QED vacuum
- Polarization observables for millicharged particles in photon collisions
- Optimized photonic gauge of extreme high vacuum with Petawatt lasers
- On the photon-pseudoscalar particle mixing in media and external fields