Electromagnetic superconductivity of vacuum induced by strong magnetic field

Abstract

The quantum vacuum may become an electromagnetic superconductor in the presence of a strong external magnetic field of the order of 10^{16} Tesla. The magnetic field of the required strength (and even stronger) is expected to be generated for a short time in ultraperipheral collisions of heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider. The superconducting properties of the new phase appear as a result of a magnetic-field-assisted condensation of quark-antiquark pairs with quantum numbers of electrically charged rho mesons. We discuss similarities and differences between the suggested superconducting state of the quantum vacuum, a conventional superconductivity and the Schwinger pair creation. We argue qualitatively and quantitatively why the superconducting state should be a natural ground state of the vacuum at the sufficiently strong magnetic field. We demonstrate the existence of the superconducting phase using both the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model and an effective bosonic model based on the vector meson dominance (the rho-meson electrodynamics). We discuss various properties of the new phase such as absence of the Meissner effect, anisotropy of superconductivity, spatial inhomogeneity of ground state, emergence of a neutral superfluid component in the ground state and presence of new topological vortices in the quark-antiquark condensates.

37 pages, 14 figures, to appear in Lect. Notes Phys. "Strongly interacting matter in magnetic fields" (Springer), edited by D. Kharzeev, K. Landsteiner, A. Schmitt, H.-U. Yee

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