Propagation of vacuum polarized photons in topological black hole spacetimes

Abstract

The one-loop effective action for QED in curved spacetime contains equivalence principle violating interactions between the electromagnetic field and the spacetime curvature. These interactions lead to a dependence of the photon velocity on the motion and polarization directions. In this paper we investigate the gravitational analogue to the electromagnetic birefringence phenomenon in the static and radiating topological black hole backgrounds. For the static topological black hole spacetimes, the velocity shift of photons is the same as that in Reissner-Nordström black holes. This reflects the fact that the propagation of vacuum polarized photons is not sensitive to the asymptotic behavior and topological structure of spacetimes. For the massless topological black hole and BTZ black hole, the light cone condition remains unchanged. In the radiating topological black hole backgrounds, the light cone condition is changed even for the radially directed photons. The velocity shifts depend on the topological structures. Due to the null fluid, the velocity shift of photons no longer vanishes at the apparent horizons as well as the event horizons. However, the “polarization sum rule” is still valid.