Impact of background field localization on vacuum polarization effects

Abstract

We aim at insights about how localization of the background field impacts nonlinear quantum vacuum signatures probed by photons in purely magnetic, electric and crossed fields. The starting point of our study are the one-loop results for the Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian and the photon polarization tensor in quantum electrodynamics (QED) evaluated in a uniform constant electromagnetic field. As is well known and often employed, especially in the weak-field limit, within certain restrictions these results also allow for the reliable analysis of vacuum polarization effects in slowly varying background fields. Here, our main interest is in manifestly non-perturbative effects. To this end, we make use of the fact that for the particular case of background field inhomogeneities of Lorentzian shape with $0\le d\le 3$ inhomogeneous directions analytical insights are possible. We study the scaling of conventional nonlinear QED signatures, such as probe-photon polarization flip and probe-photon induced electron-positron pair production, with relevant parameters. Special attention is put on the $d$ dependence of the considered effects.

arXiv comment18 pages

References in corpus (21)

• Extremely high-intensity laser interactions with fundamental quantum systems
• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Measuring Vacuum Polarisation with High Power Lasers
• Finite size effects in stimulated laser pair production
• Magnetic and electric properties of quantum vacuum
• Vacuum refractive indices and helicity flip in strong-field QED
• The Heisenberg-Euler Effective Action: 75 years on
• Vacuum birefringence in strong inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields
• Photon polarisation in light-by-light scattering: finite size effects
• Spin and polarisation dependent LCFA rates for nonlinear Compton and Breit-Wheeler processes
• Conjecture of perturbative QED breakdown at $\alpha {\chi }^{2/3}\gtrsim 1$
• Resummation of QED radiative corrections in a strong constant crossed field
• Polarization operator approach to pair creation in short laser pulses
• Probing vacuum polarization effects with high-intensity lasers
• The photon polarization tensor in a homogeneous magnetic or electric field
• Quantum Reflection as a New Signature of Quantum Vacuum Nonlinearity
• Photon propagation in slowly varying inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields
• Impact of the laser spatio-temporal shape on Breit-Wheeler pair production
• Quantum reflection of photons off spatio-temporal electromagnetic field inhomogeneities
• Non-linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in collisions of bremsstrahlung $\gamma -$quanta and a tightly focussed laser pulse
• The Heisenberg-Euler effective action in slowly varying electric field inhomogeneities of Lorentzian shape