Vacuum birefringence detection in all-optical scenarios

Abstract

In this paper we propose an all-optical vacuum birefringence experiment and evaluate its feasibility for various scenarios. Many petawatt-class lasers became operational and many more are expected to enter operation in the near future, therefore unprecedented electromagnetic fields ($E_L\sim 10^{14}-10^{15}$ V/m and intensities $I_L\sim 10^{21}-10^{23}$ W/cm${}^2$) will become available for experiments. In our proposal a petawatt-class laser disturbs the quantum vacuum and creates a delay in a counter-propagating probe laser beam. Placing this delayed beam in one arm of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), allows the measurement of the vacuum refraction coefficient via a phase shift. Coherent as well as squeezed light are both considered and the minimum phase sensitivity evaluated. We show that using existing technology and with some moderately optimistic assumptions, at least part of the discussed scenarios are feasible for a vacuum birefringence detection experiment.

12 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (26)

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• All-optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearities in generic laser fields
• Direct accessibility of the fundamental constants governing light-by-light scattering
• Vacuum birefringence at x-ray free-electron lasers
• Report on Progress in Physics: Observation of the Breit-Wheeler Process and Vacuum Birefringence in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Letter of Intent: Towards a Vacuum Birefringence Experiment at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields
• Considerations on the modified Maxwell electrodynamics in the presence of an electric and magnetic background
• On the Heisenberg limit for detecting vacuum birefringence
• Signatures of vacuum birefringence in low-power flying focus pulses
• Quantum Fisher information maximization in an unbalanced interferometer
• Phase sensitivity for an unbalanced interferometer without input phase-matching restrictions
• Vacuum birefringence at the Gamma Factory
• QED vacuum nonlinearity in Laguerre-Gauss beams
• All-optical Quantum Vacuum Signals in Two-Beam Collision
• New Estimation of the Curvature Effect for the X-ray Vacuum Diffraction Induced by an Intense Laser Field
• Vacuum material properties and Cherenkov radiation in Logarithmic Electrodynamics
• On Measuring Stimulated Photon-photon Scattering using Multiple Ultraintense Lasers
• Quantum vacuum processes in the extremely intense light of relativistic plasma mirror sources
• Characteristics of interaction between Gravitons and Photons
• A dark-field setup for the measurement of light-by-light scattering with high-intensity lasers
• A Dirac-material-inspired non-linear electrodynamic model
• Interferometric Differential High-Frequency Lock-In Probe for Laser-Induced Vacuum Birefringence
• Phase transition analogs in laser collisions with a dark-field setup
• X-ray vacuum diffraction at finite spatio-temporal offset
• Remarks on inverse electrodynamics