Astrophysics in Strong Electromagnetic Fields and Laboratory Astrophysics

Abstract

Recent observations of gravitational waves from binary mergers of black holes or neutron stars and the rapid development of ultra-intense lasers lead strong field physics to a frontier of new physics in the 21st century. Strong gravity phenomena are most precisely described by general relativity, and lasers that are described by another most precisely tested quantum electrodynamics (QED) can be focused into a tiny area in a short period through the chirped pulse amplification and generate extremely high intensity electromagnetic (EM) fields beyond the conventional methods. It is physically interesting to study QED phenomena in curved spacetimes, in which both strong gravitational and electromagnetic fields play important roles. There are many sources for strong gravitational and electromagnetic fields in the sky or universe, such highly magnetized neutron stars, magnetized black holes, and the early universe. We review quantum field theoretical frameworks for QED both in the Minkowski spacetime and curved spacetimes, in particular, charged black holes and the early universe, and discuss the QED physics in strong EM fields, such as the vacuum polarization and Schwinger pair production and their implications to astrophysics and cosmology.

LaTex 30 pages, 1 figure; review for "Strong EM Field Physics and Laboratory Astrophysics" session of Marcel Grossmann Meeting 15, Rome, July 1-7, 2018

References in corpus (20)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Near-horizon symmetries of extremal black holes
• Evidence for vacuum birefringence from the first optical polarimetry measurement of the isolated neutron star RX\, J1856.5$-$3754
• Super-Adiabatic Particle Number in Schwinger and de Sitter Particle Production
• Challenges in Inflationary Magnetogenesis: Constraints from Strong Coupling, Backreaction and the Schwinger Effect
• Holographic Schwinger effect in de Sitter space
• Effective Action of QED in Electric Field Backgrounds
• Schwinger Pair Production in dS_2 and AdS_2
• Early Cosmological Evolution of Primordial Electromagnetic Fields
• Effect of a magnetic field on Schwinger mechanism in de Sitter spacetime
• Gravitational corrections to the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian
• One-Loop Effective Action and Schwinger Effect in (Anti-) de Sitter Space
• $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ pair creation by vacuum polarization around electromagnetic black holes
• Schwinger Mechanism During Inflation
• The Black Hole Meissner Effect and Blandford-Znajek Jets
• Pair Production in Near Extremal Kerr-Newman Black Holes
• Ergoregions in Magnetised Black Hole Spacetimes
• QED Actions in Supercritical Fields
• Equivalence between the phase-integral and worldline-instanton methods
• Unruh effect and Schwinger pair creation under extreme acceleration by ultraintense lasers