Monte Carlo study of the BMV vacuum linear magnetic birefringence experiment

Abstract

QED vacuum can be polarized and magnetized by an external electromagnetic field, therefore acting as a birefringent medium. This effect has not yet been measured. In this paper, after having recalled the main facts concerning Vacuum Magnetic Birefringence polarimetry detection method and the related noise sources, we detail our Monte Carlo simulation of a pulsed magnetic field data run. Our Monte Carlo results are optimized to match BMV experiment 2014 data. We show that our Monte Carlo approach can reproduce experimental results giving an important insight to the systematic effects limiting experiment sensitivity.

References in corpus (3)

• Evidence for vacuum birefringence from the first optical polarimetry measurement of the isolated neutron star RX\, J1856.5$-$3754
• The BMV experiment : a novel apparatus to study the propagation of light in a transverse magnetic field
• The OVAL experiment: A new experiment to measure vacuum magnetic birefringence using high repetition pulsed magnets

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• Coherent enhancement of QED cross-sections in electromagnetic backgrounds
• A novel pulsed magnet for magnetic linear birefringence measurements
• X-ray vacuum diffraction at finite spatio-temporal offset