Bound on the Photon Charge from the Phase Coherence of Extragalactic Radiation

Abstract

If the photon possessed a nonzero charge, then electromagnetic waves traveling along different paths would acquire Aharonov-Bohm phase differences. The fact that such an effect has not hindered interferometric astronomy places a bound on the photon charge estimated to be at the 10^(-32) e level if all photons have the same charge and 10^(-46) e if different photons can carry different charges.

8 pages, new bound added, version appearing in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (3)

• Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (Particle Data Group mini-review)
• The Cosmological Parameters 2006
• Sensitive polarimetric search for relativity violations in gamma-ray bursts

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• Astrophysical Bounds on the Photon Charge and Magnetic Moment
• Some Enigmatic Aspects of the Early Universe
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• Bounds on the charge of the graviton using gravitational wave observations
• True Neutrality as a New Type of Flavour