Strong Field Limit Research Articles

Extension of the multilevel radiative transfer code PyRaTE to model linear polarization of molecular lines

Linear polarization of spectral lines, commonly known as the Goldreich-Kylafis effect within the star formation community, is one of the most underutilized techniques for probing magnetic fields in the dense and cold interstellar medium. In this study, we implement linear polarization of molecular spectral lines into the multilevel, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium radiative transfer code PyRaTE Different modes of polarized radiation are treated individually, with separate optical depths computed for each polarization direction. Our implementation is valid in the so-called strong magnetic field limit and is exact for either a system satisfying the large-velocity-gradient approximation, and/or for any system with a uniform magnetic field. We benchmark our implementation against analytical results and provide tests for various limiting cases. In agreement with previous theoretical results, we find that in the multilevel case the amount of fractional polarization decreases when compared to the two-level approximation, but this result is subject to the relative importance between radiative and collisional processes. Finally, we post-process an axially symmetric, nonideal magnetohydrodynamic chemo-dynamical simulation of a collapsing prestellar core and provide theoretical predictions regarding the shape (as a function of velocity) of the polarization fraction of $ CO $ during the early stages in the evolution of molecular clouds.

Renormalization flow of nonlinear electrodynamics

We study the renormalization flow of generic actions that depend on the invariants of the field strength tensor of an Abelian gauge field. While the Maxwell action defines a Gaussian fixed point, we search for further non-Gaussian fixed points or rather fixed functions, i.e., globally existing Lagrangians of the invariants. Using standard small-field expansion techniques for the resulting functional flow equation, a large number of fixed points is obtained, which—in analogy to recent findings for a shift-symmetric scalar field—we consider as approximation artifacts. For the construction of a globally existing fixed function, we pay attention to the use of proper initial conditions. Parametrizing the latter by the photon anomalous dimension, both the coefficients of the weak-field expansion are fully determined and those of the large-field expansion can be matched such that a global fixed function can be constructed for magnetic fields. The anomalous dimension also governs the strong-field limit. Our results provide evidence for the existence of a continuum of non-Gaussian fixed points parametrized by a small positive anomalous dimension below a critical value. We discuss the implications of this result within various scenarios with and without additional matter. For the strong-field limit of the 1PI QED effective action, where the anomalous dimension is determined by electronic fluctuations, our result suggests the existence of a singularity free strong-field limit, circumventing the standard conclusions connected to the perturbative Landau pole. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Numerical analysis of resonant axion-photon mixing

Many present-day axion searches attempt to probe the mixing of axions and photons, which occurs in the presence of an external magnetic field. While this process is well understood in a number of simple and idealized contexts, a strongly varying or highly inhomogeneous background can impact the efficiency and evolution of the mixing in a nontrivial manner. In an effort to develop a generalized framework for analyzing axion-photon mixing in arbitrary systems, we focus in this work on directly solving the axion-modified form of Maxwell’s equations across a simulation domain with a spatially varying background. We concentrate specifically on understanding resonantly enhanced axion-photon mixing in a highly magnetized plasma, which is a key ingredient for developing precision predictions of radio signals emanating from the magnetospheres of neutron stars. After illustrating the success and accuracy of our approach for simplified limiting cases, we compare our results with a number of analytic solutions recently derived to describe mixing in these systems. We find that our numerical method demonstrates a high level of agreement with one, but only one, of the published results. Interestingly, our method also recovers the mixing between the axion and magnetosonic-t and Alfvén modes; these modes cannot escape from the regions of dense plasma but could nontrivially alter the dynamics in certain environments. Future work will focus on extending our calculations to study resonant mixing in strongly variable backgrounds, mixing in generalized media (beyond the strong magnetic field limit), and the mixing of photons with other light bosonic fields, such as dark photons. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Fermion self-energy and effective mass in a noisy magnetic background

In this article, we consider the propagation of QED fermions in the presence of a classical background magnetic field with white-noise stochastic fluctuations. The effects of the magnetic field fluctuations are incorporated into the fermion and photon propagators in a quasiparticle picture, which we developed in previous works using the . By working in the very strong-field limit, here we explicitly calculate the fermion self-energy involving radiative contributions at first order in αem, in order to obtain the noise-averaged mass of the fermion propagating in the fluctuating magnetized medium. Our analytical results reveal a leading double-logarithmic contribution ∼[ln(|eB|/m2)]2 to the mass, with an imaginary part representing a spectral broadening proportional to the magnetic noise autocorrelation Δ. While a uniform magnetic field already breaks Lorentz invariance, inducing the usual separation into two orthogonal subspaces (perpendicular and parallel with respect to the field), the presence of magnetic noise further breaks the remaining symmetry, thus leading to distinct spectral widths associated with fermion and antifermion, and their spin projection in the quasiparticle picture. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

The gravitational lensing by rotating black holes in loop quantum gravity

In this paper, we explore gravitational lensing effects associated with rotating black holes within the framework of loop quantum gravity. Utilizing the Gauss-Bonnet theorem as extended by Ono et al., we compute the light deflection angle in the weak field limit for a lens that is finitely distanced from both the source and the observer. Our findings indicate that the weak deflection angle for rotating black holes in LQG is smaller than that observed for the classical Kerr black holes, albeit with minimal deviations. In the strong field limit, we determine the photon sphere radius, the light deflection angle, and lensing observables, including the image position θ∞, angular separation s, magnification rmag, and temporal delays among various relativistic images. By considering supermassive black holes, such as Sgr A* and M87*, within the LQG framework, we calculate these observables and investigate the influence of the quantum parameter Aλ on them, compared with the Kerr black hole outcomes. Our comparative analysis reveals that the image position θ∞ and separation s for Sgr A* consistently exceed those for M87*, whereas M87* exhibits considerably greater time delays than Sgr A*. These distinctions could be important in differentiating between rotating black holes in LQG and classical Kerr black holes in future astronomical observations.

Nonlinear electrodynamics for the vacuum of Dirac materials: Photon magnetic properties and radiation pressures

We investigate the magnetic properties of photons propagating through Dirac materials in a magnetic field, considering both vacuum and medium contributions. Photon propagation properties are obtained through a second-order expansion of nonlinear Euler-Heisenberg electrodynamics at finite density and temperature considering Dirac material parameters (Dirac fine structure constant, band gap, and Fermi velocity). Total magnetization (including electron and photon contributions) and photon-effective magnetic moment are computed. Observables such as photon energy density, radiation pressure, and Poynting vector are obtained by an average of components of the energy-momentum tensor. All quantities are expressed in terms of Lagrangian derivatives. Those related to the vacuum are valid for any value of the external magnetic field, and both the weak- and strong-field limits are recovered. We discuss some ideas of experiments that may contribute to testing in Dirac materials the phenomenology of the strong magnetic field in the quantum electrodynamic (QED) vacuum and how nonlinear corrections on the magnetization, radiation pressure, and birefringence are amplified up to 103 times QED corrections. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Testing gravitational lensing effects by supermassive massive black holes with superstring theory metric: Astrophysical implications and EHT constraints

We investigate gravitational lensing, both strong and weak, induced by charged black holes within heterotic superstring theory – α′-corrected Reissner–Nordström (RN) black holes characterized by an additional parameter, denoted as α, in addition to mass M and charge Q. Our findings reveal that as the parameter α increases, various crucial parameters such as the unstable photon orbit radius rph, critical impact parameter uph, deflection angle αD(θ), and angular position θ∞ also increase. Concurrently, the angular separation s decreases, while the relative magnitude rmag increases with the growing value of α. Utilizing supermassive black holes (SMBH) Sgr A* and M87* as gravitational lenses, the deflection angle resulting from the α′-corrected RN black hole, in both strong and weak field limits, surpasses that of the RN black holes (α=0) and falls below that of Schwarzschild black holes (α=0, Q=0). For Sgr A*, the angular position θ∞ lies within (24.08, 26.38) μas, while for M87* it ranges from (18.23, 19.96) μas. Estimating the time delay between the first and second relativistic images using twenty supermassive galactic center black holes as lenses, we find, for instance, that the time delay for Sgr A* and M87*, with Q=0.5 and α=5, can reach approximately 9.81 min and 14835.6 min, respectively. Remarkably, the EHT results for Sgr A* impose more stringent limits on the parameter space of α′-corrected RN black holes compared to those established by the EHT results for M87*. Our analysis deduces that, within the 1σ region, a substantial portion of the parameter space for α′-corrected RN black holes aligns with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) results for M87* and Sgr A*, and that and one cannot rule out the possibility of that heterotic superstring theory’s α′-corrected RN black holes being strong candidates for astrophysical black holes.

Towards the full Heisenberg-Euler effective action at large N

We study the Heisenberg-Euler effective action in constant electromagnetic fields F¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\overline{F} $$\\end{document} for QED with N charged particle flavors of the same mass and charge e in the large N limit characterized by sending N → ∞ while keeping Ne2 ∼ eF¯\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ e\\overline{F} $$\\end{document} ∼ N0 fixed. This immediately implies that contributions that scale with inverse powers of N can be neglected and the resulting effective action scales linearly with N . Interestingly, due to the presence of one-particle reducible diagrams, even in this limit the Heisenberg-Euler effective action receives contributions of arbitrary loop order. In particular for the special cases of electric- and magnetic-like field configurations we construct an explicit expression for the associated effective Lagrangian that, upon extremization for two constant scalar coefficients, allows to evaluate its full, all-order result at arbitrarily large field strengths. We demonstrate that our manifestly nonperturbative expression correctly reproduces the known results for the Heisenberg-Euler effective action at large N , namely its all-loop strong field limit and its low-order perturbative expansion in powers of the fine-structure constant.

Hamiltonian birefringence and Born-Infeld limits

Using Hamiltonian methods, we find six relativistic theories of nonlinear electrodynamics for which plane wave perturbations about a constant uniform background are not birefringent. All have the same conformal strong-field limit to Bialynicki-Birula (BB) electrodynamics, but only four avoid superluminal propagation: Born-Infeld (BI), its non-conformal “extreme” limits (electric and magnetic) and the conformal BB limit. The quadratic dispersion relation of BI is shown to degenerate in the extreme limits to a pair of linear relations, which become identical in the BB limit.

Unveiling Coherent Control of Halomethane Dissociation Induced by a Single Strong Ultraviolet Pulse.

We present a theoretical investigation into the coherent control of photodissociation reactions in halomethanes, specifically focusing on CH2BrCl by manipulating the spectral phase of a single femtosecond laser pulse. We examine the photodissociation of CH2BrCl under an ultrashort pulse with a quadratic spectral phase and reveal the sensitivity of both the total dissociation probability and the resulting radical products (Br+CH2Cl and Cl+CH2Br) to chirp rates. To gain insights into the underlying mechanism, we calculate the population distributions of excited vibrational states in the ground electronic state, demonstrating the occurrence of resonance Raman scattering (RRS) in the strong-field limit regime. By utilizing chirped pulses, we show that this RRS phenomenon can be suppressed and even eliminated through quantum destructive interference. This highlights the high sensitivity of photodissociation into Cl+CH2Br to the spectral phase, showcasing a phenomenon that goes beyond the traditional one-photon photodissociation of isolated molecules in the weak-field limit regime. These findings emphasize the importance of coherent control in the exploration and utilization of photodissociation in polyatomic molecules, paving the way for new advancements in chemical physics and femtochemistry.

Gravitational lensing effects of black hole with conformally coupled scalar hair

In this paper, we investigate the gravitational lensing effects in the weak and strong field limits of a static black hole with conformally coupled scalar field. In the weak field limit, with the use of Gauss–Bonnet theorem we calculate the deflection angle of the light. It is found that comparing to Schwarzschild and Reissner–Nordstro¨\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\ddot{\ ext {o}}$$\\end{document}m (RN) black holes in general relativity, the weak deflection angle can be enhanced/suppressed by the scalar hair. In the strong field limit, we first compute the light deflection angle via calculating the lensing coefficients, all of which increase as the values of electric and scalar charges increase. Then we evaluate the lensing observables in strong field regime by supposing the hairy black hole as the candidate of M87* and SgrA* supermassive black holes, respectively. We find that the scalar hair has significant influences on various observables. In particular, the lensing observables of the charged black hole with positive scalar hair and RN black hole have degeneracy, which will be broken by the case with negative scalar hair. Our theoretical findings imply that it is feasible to employ the gravitational lensing effects as a probe of Einstein–Maxwell theory with negative scalar field differentiating from general relativity, once the future astrophysical observation is precise enough.

Adiabatic deformations of quantum Hall droplets

We consider area-preserving deformations of the plane, acting on electronic wave functions through “quantomorphisms” that change both the underlying metric and the confining potential. We show that adiabatic sequences of such transformations produce Berry phases that can be written in closed form in terms of the many-body current and density, even in the presence of interactions. For a large class of deformations that generalize squeezing and shearing, the leading piece of the phase is a super-extensive Aharonov-Bohm term (\propto N^2∝N2 for NN electrons) in the thermodynamic limit. Its gauge-invariant subleading partner only measures the current, whose dominant contribution to the phase stems from a jump at the edge in the limit of strong magnetic fields. This results in a finite Berry curvature per unit area, reminiscent of the Hall viscosity. We show that the latter is in fact included in our formalism, bypassing its standard derivation on a torus and suggesting realistic experimental setups for its observation in quantum simulators.

Gravitational lensing in a topologically charged Eddington-inspired Born–Infeld spacetime

In the present paper, we study several aspects of gravitational lensing caused by a topologically charged Monopole/Wormhole, both in the weak field limit and in the strong field limit. We calculate the light deflection and then use it to determine the observables, with which one can investigate the existence of these objects through observational tools. We emphasize that the presence of the topological charge produces changes in the observables in relation to the case of General Relativity Ellis–Bronnikov wormhole.

On the semi-classical analysis of Schrödinger operators with linear electric potentials on a bounded domain

The aim of this paper is to establish the asymptotic expansion of the eigenvalues of the Stark Hamiltonian, with a strong uniform electric field and Dirichlet boundary conditions on a smooth bounded domain of R N , N ⩾ 2. This work aims at generalizing the recent results of Cornean, Krejčiřik, Pedersen, Raymond, and Stockmeyer in dimension 2. More precisely, in dimension N, in the strong electric field limit, we derive, under certain local convexity conditions, a full asymptotic expansion of the low-lying eigenvalues. To establish our main result, we perform the construction of quasi-modes. The “optimality” of our constructions is then established thanks to a reduction to model operators and localization estimates.

Effect of electric interaction on the deflection and gravitational lensing in the strong field limit

The deflection angle Delta phi of charged signals in general charged spacetime in the strong deflection limit is analyzed in this work using a perturbative method generalized from the neutral signal case. The solved Delta phi naturally contains the finite distance effect and takes a quasi-power series form with a logarithmic divergence at the leading order. The coefficients of the series contain both the gravitational and electric contributions. Using the Reissner–Nordström spacetime as an example, we found that an electric repulsion (or attraction) tends to decrease (or increase) the critical impact parameter b_c. If the repulsion is strong enough, then b_c can shrink to zero and the critical particle sphere r_{0c} will disappear. These results are applied to the gravitational lensing of charge signal, from which we solved the image positions, their magnifications and time delays. It is found that in general, the electric repulsion (or attraction) will decrease (or increase) the image apparent angles, the black hole shadow sizes as well as their magnifications but increase (or decrease) the time delays.

Spectral properties of a mixed singlet-triplet Ising superconductor

Conventional two-dimensional superconductivity is destroyed when the critical in-plane magnetic field exceeds the so-called Pauli limit. Some monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides lack inversion symmetry and the strong spin-orbit coupling leads to a valley-dependent Zeeman-like spin splitting. The resulting spin-valley locking lifts the valley degeneracy and results in a strong enhancement of the in-plane critical magnetic field. In these systems, it was predicted that the density of states in an in-plane field exhibits distinct mirage gaps at finite energies of about the spin-orbit coupling strength, which arise from a coupling of the electron and hole bands at energy larger than the superconducting gap. In this study, we investigate the impact of a triplet pairing channel on the spectral properties, primarily the mirage gap and the superconducting gap, in the clean limit. Notably, in the presence of the triplet pairing channel, the mirage-gap width is reduced for the low magnetic fields. Furthermore, when the temperature is lower than the triplet critical temperature, the mirage gaps survive even in the strong-field limit due to the finite singlet and triplet order parameters. Our work provides insights into controlling and understanding the properties of spin-triplet Cooper pairs.

Electromagnetism of one-component plasmas of massless fermions

We present a theoretical study of two- and three-dimensional massless Dirac one-component plasmas embedded in a constant uniform magnetic field. We determine the wavefunctions and Landau energy levels of a massless Dirac fermion in a constant magnetic field. On this basis we consider magnetism of Fermi fluids of massless charged particles. We show that such a three-dimensional Dirac plasma consisting of fermions with the same helicity has its own magnetic moment. We also consider the limit of strong magnetic fields and investigate the De Haas–van Alphen effect. We derive the Kubo formula for the electrical conductivity tensor of massless Dirac plasmas and consider the Shubnikov–de Haas effect. In addition, we propose a model of the static conductivity tensor and employ the matrix version of the classical method of moments to derive a Drude-like formula for the dynamic conductivity tensor for massless Dirac plasmas. We find that the electrical conductivity tensor for Dirac fermions with the right helicity is not isotropic in the plane perpendicular to the magnetic field.

Quantum Geometric Oscillations in Two-Dimensional Flat-Band Solids.

Two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures can be engineered into artificial superlattices that host flat bands with significant Berry curvature and provide a favorable environment for the emergence of novel electron dynamics. In particular, the Berry curvature can induce an oscillating trajectory of an electron wave packet transverse to an applied static electric field. Though analogous to Bloch oscillations, this novel oscillatory behavior is driven entirely by quantum geometry in momentum space instead of band dispersion. While the current from Bloch oscillations can be localized by increasing field strength, the current from the geometric orbits saturates to a nonzero plateau in the strong-field limit. In nonmagnetic materials, the geometric oscillations are even under inversion of the applied field, whereas the Bloch oscillations are odd, a property that can be used to distinguish these two coexisting effects.

Oblique Bernstein wave propagation in electron‐ion plasma with electron quantization effects

AbstractWe have studied the role of electron quantization effects on the dispersion characteristics of the oblique electron Bernstein wave (EBW) in an electron‐ion plasma using Vlasov‐Poisson model. Our analysis shows that large thermal effects (as compared to quantization effects) give rise to the usual classical results while in the limit of strong magnetic field, the dispersion characteristics changes. The existence of a quantum Bernstein mode has been proposed which appears purely due to the electron quantization effects. The damping of the oblique EBW has also been analyzed in detail and we found that the magnitude of the damping of the wave decreases as we decrease the obliqueness parameter (parallel to perpendicular wavenumber ratio) which agrees with the earlier theoretical and experimental findings. Moreover, the strong quantization effects () also tend to suppress the damping of EBW which contributes to the stabilization of the waves. The present findings are relevant to the laboratory laser‐produced plasmas where strong external magnetic fields exist, and also to the dense astrophysical plasma environments.

Traversable wormholes with electric charge and scalar field in f(R,T) gravity

Kim and Lee [Phys. Rev. D 63 (2001) 064014] studied charged wormholes and Morris–Thorne wormholes in the presence of scalar field using the concepts of general relativity. In this paper, we have also considered same wormholes affected with electric charge and scalar field and extended their study using the framework of [Formula: see text] gravity with [Formula: see text] gravity model, where [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] are constants. We have examined the possibility for minimization of the amount of exotic matter through energy conditions. Further, we have obtained the deflection angle, an important notion in gravitational lensing, by using strong field limit coefficients which may be helpful in the detection of wormholes.