2007/04/24 by Andreas Ringwald, Ringwald, Andreas
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0704.3195
20 pages, 18 figures, pdproc.sty; talk presented at the XII International Workshop on ``Neutrino Telescopes'', March 6-9, 2007, Venice, Italy
arxiv created 2007/04/24 · openalex publication_date 2007/04/24 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Recently the PVLAS collaboration reported the observation of a rotation of linearly polarized laser light induced by a transverse magnetic field -- a signal being unexpected within standard QED. In this review, we emphasize two mechanisms which have been proposed to explain this result: production of a single light neutral spin-zero particle or pair production of light minicharged particles. We discuss a class of models, involving, in addition to our familiar ``visible'' photon, further light ``hidden paraphotons'', which mix kinematically with the visible one, and further light paracharged particles. In these models, very strong astrophysical and cosmological bounds on the weakly interacting light particles mentioned above can be evaded. In the upcoming year, a number of decisive laboratory based tests of the particle interpretation of the PVLAS anomaly will be done. More generally, such experiments, exploiting high fluxes of low-energy photons and/or large electromagnetic fields, will dig into previously unconstrained parameter space of the above mentioned models.