Nonlinear electrodynamics is skilled with knots

Abstract

The aims of this letter are three-fold: First is to show that nonlinear generalizations of electrodynamics support various types of knotted solutions in vacuum. The solutions are universal in the sense that they do not depend on the specific Lagrangian density, at least if the latter gives rise to a well-posed theory. Second is to describe the interaction between probe waves and knotted background configurations. We show that the qualitative behaviour of this interaction may be described in terms of Robinson congruences, which appear explicitly in the causal structure of the theory. Finally, we argue that optical arrangements endowed with intense background fields could be the natural place to look for the knots experimentally.

5 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (3)

• First results from the new PVLAS apparatus: a new limit on vacuum magnetic birefringence
• Nonlinear electrodynamics as a symmetric hyperbolic system
• Motion of charged particles in an electromagnetic knot

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• Finsler Geometries from Topological Electromagnetism
• Nonlinear dynamics of a charged particle in a strong non-null knot wave background