Polarization-operator approach to optical signatures of axion-like particles in strong laser pulses

Abstract

Hypothetical oscillations of probe photons into axion-like particles might be revealed by exploiting the strong fields of high-intensity laser pulses. Considering an arbitrary plane-wave background, we determine the polarization tensor induced by the quantum fluctuations of the axion field and use it to calculate how the polarimetric properties of an initially linear-polarized probe beam are modified. We find that various experimental setups based on contemporary facilities and instrumentation might lead to new exclusion bounds on the parameter space of these particle candidates. The impact of the pulse shape on the discovery potential is studied via a comparison between the cases in which the wave is modulated by a Gaussian envelope and a ${\sin }^2$ profile. This analysis shows that the upper limits resulting from the ellipticity are relatively insensitive to this change, whereas those arising from the rotation of the polarization plane turn out to be more dependent on the field shape.

9 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Letter of Intent: Towards a Vacuum Birefringence Experiment at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields
• ALP production through non-linear Compton scattering in intense fields
• Electron-seeded ALP production and ALP decay in an oscillating electromagnetic field
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• All-optical Quantum Vacuum Signals in Two-Beam Collision
• Fundamental constants from photon-photon scattering in three-beam collisions
• Axionlike-particle generation by laser-plasma interaction
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