Characterization of the Vacuum Birefringence Polarimeter at BMV: Dynamical Cavity Mirror Birefringence

Birefringence and Dichroism of the QED Vacuum

In the presence of a strong external field, the vacuum reacts, becoming magnetized and polarized. The index of refraction, magnetic permeability, and dielectric constant of the vacuum are straightforward to calculate using quantum electrodynamic one-loop corrections [1–6]. In this paper, we calculate the magnetic permeability and dielectric tensors of an external electric or magnetic field of a...

Vacuum Birefringence as a Vacuum Emission Process

We argue that the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence in strong inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields can be most efficiently analyzed in terms of a vacuum emission process. In this contribution, we exemplarily stick to the case of vacuum birefringence in a stationary perpendicularly directed, purely magnetic background field extending over a finite spatial extent. Similar field configurations ar...

Mirror Birefringcncc in a Fabry-Perot Cavity and the Detection of Vacuum Birefringence in a Magnetic Field

Wc discuss the effect of mirror birefringence in two optical schemes designed to detect the quantum-electrodynamics (QED) predictions of vacuum bircfringence under the influence of a strong magnetic field, B. Both schemes make t]sc of a high finesse Fabry-Perot cavity (F-P) to incre:ise the average path length of the light in the magnetic field. The first schcmc,)wc called the frequency scheme,...

Vacuum Birefringence in a Rotating Magnetic Field

We calculate the vacuum polarization-induced ellipticity acquired by a linearly polarized laser beam of angular frequency ω̄ on traversing a region containing a transverse magnetic field rotating with a small angular velocity Ω around the beam axis. The transmitted beam contains the fundamental frequency ω̄ and weak sidebands of frequency ω̄±2Ω, but no other sidebands. To first order in small quan...

Vacuum birefringence in strong inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields