Faster than light photons in gravitational fields II.

2002/03/11 by G. M. Shore, G.M. Shore · 42 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Causality (physics) #Classical mechanics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Field (mathematics) #Gravitation #Gravitational field #Gravitational wave #Limit (mathematics) #Mathematical analysis #Phase velocity #Photon #Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Spacetime #Speed of light (cellular automaton) #Superluminal motion #gr-qc #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0550-3213(02)00240-7

published in Nuclear Physics B 633(1-2), 271-294 (Elsevier BV) · 27 pages, 7 figures, TeX with harvmac

arxiv created 2002/03/11 · openalex publication_date 2002/06/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2022/10/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/04

Abstract

Vacuum polarisation in QED in a background gravitational field induces interactions which effectively violate the strong equivalence principle and affect the propagation of light. In the low frequency limit, Drummond and Hathrell have shown that this mechanism leads to superluminal photon velocities. To confront this phenomenon with causality, however, it is necessary to extend the calculation of the phase velocity \vp(\w) to high frequencies, since it is \vp(∞) which determines the characteristics of the effective wave equation and thus the causal structure. In this paper, we use a recently constructed expression, valid to all orders in a derivative expansion, for the effective action of QED in curved spacetime to determine the frequency dependence of the phase velocity and investigate whether superluminal velocities indeed persist in the high frequency limit.

Citations

• Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation
• Superluminal velocity of photons in a gravitational background
• Light propagation in non-trivial QED vacua
• Gravitational waves in general relativity, VII. Waves from axi-symmetric isolated system
• Gravitational waves in general relativity VIII. Waves in asymptotically flat space-time
• Photon splitting and photon dispersion in a strong magnetic field

Cited by

• Superluminality and UV completion
• The causal structure of QED in curved spacetime: analyticity and the refractive index
• The refractive index of curved spacetime II: QED, Penrose limits and black holes
• Asymptotic states and renormalization in Lorentz-violating quantum field theory
• Vacuum polarization in Siklos spacetimes
• New non-linear modified massless Klein–Gordon equation