2017/10/31 by Fabio Briscese · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Classical mechanics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Electromagnetic field #Electromagnetic radiation #Maxwell's equations #Nonlinear system #Photon #Photon polarization #Physics #Plane wave #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Scattering #hep-th #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.96.053801
published in Physical Review A 96(5) (American Physical Society) · Version published in PRA, some typos corrected
arxiv created 2017/11/01 · openalex publication_date 2017/11/01 · arxiv updated 2017/11/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider the Heisenberg-Euler action for an electromagnetic field in vacuum, which includes quantum corrections to the Maxwell equations induced by photon-photon scattering. We show that, in some configurations, the plane monochromatic waves become unstable, due to the appearance of secularities in the dynamical equations. These secularities can be treated using a multiscale approach, introducing a slow time variable. The amplitudes of the plane electromagnetic waves satisfy a system of ordinary differential nonlinear equations in the slow time. The analysis of this system shows that, due to the effect of photon-photon scattering, in the unstable configurations the electromagnetic waves oscillate periodically between left-hand-sided and right-hand-sided polarizations. Finally, we discuss the physical implications of this finding and the possibility of disclosing traces of this effect in optical experiments.