2003/05/13 by Guillermo F. Rubilar, Yuri N. Obukhov, Friedrich W. Hehl · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/20/14/101
published as Class.Quant.Grav. 20 (2003) L185-L192 · Revtex, 12 pages, no figures
arxiv created 2003/05/13 · openalex publication_date 2003/06/13 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
In conventional Maxwell–Lorentz electrodynamics, the propagation of light is influenced by the metric, not, however, by the possible presence of a torsion T . Still the light can feel torsion if the latter is coupled nonminimally to the electromagnetic field F by means of a supplementary Lagrangian of the type ∼ℓ 2 T 2 F 2 (ℓ = coupling constant). Recently Preuss suggested a specific nonminimal term of this nature. We evaluate the spacetime relation of Preuss in the background of a general O(3)-symmetric torsion field and prove by specifying the optical metric of spacetime that this can yield birefringence in vacuum. Moreover, we show that the nonminimally coupled homogeneous and isotropic torsion field in a Friedmann cosmos affects the speed of light.