"Planck-scale physics" of vacuum in a strong magnetic field
arXiv:1203.2858 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.85.114013
Abstract
It is widely believed that Lorentz symmetry of physical vacuum is broken near the Planck scale. Here we show that recently demonstrated "hyperbolic metamaterial" behaviour of vacuum in a strong magnetic field provides us with an interesting analogy of the Planck-scale physics. As demonstrated by Chernodub, strong magnetic field forces vacuum to develop real condensates of electrically charged ρmesons, which form an anisotropic inhomogeneous superconducting state similar to Abrikosov vortex lattice. As far as electromagnetic field behaviour is concerned, this hyperbolic metamaterial state of vacuum exhibits effective 3D Lorentz symmetry, which is broken at small scale (large momenta) due to spatial dispersion. Thus, an effective Lorentz symmetry-violating "Planck scale" may be introduced. Near the critical magnetic field this effective "Planck scale" is much larger than the metamaterial periodicity defined by the ρmeson lattice. Similar to regular hyperbolic metamaterials, spatial dispersion of vacuum in a strong magnetic field leads to appearance of the "additional wave", which manifests itself as a "heavy" extraordinary photon with an effective mass ~2GeV.
14 pages, 2 figures, this version is accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.D
References in corpus (6)
- Non-local effects in effective medium response of nano-layered meta-materials
- Superconductivity of QCD vacuum in strong magnetic field
- Nonlocal Homogenization Model for a Periodic Array of Epsilon-Negative Rods
- Spontaneous electromagnetic superconductivity of vacuum in strong magnetic field: evidence from the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model
- Electric field of a pointlike charge in a strong magnetic field and ground state of a hydrogenlike atom
- Magnetic Fields Boosted by Gluon Vortices in Color Superconductivity