We model the effect of photon and ultra-light pseudoscalar mixing on the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through the extragalactic medium. The medium is modelled as a large number of magnetic domains, uncorrelated with one another. We obtain an analytic expression for the different Stokes parameters in the limit of small mixing angle. The different Stokes parameters are found to increase linearly with the number of domains. We also verify this result by direct numerical simulations. We use this formalism to estimate the effect of pseudoscalar-photon mixing on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization. We impose limits on the model parameters by the CMB observations. We find that the currently allowed parameter range admits a CMB circular polarization up to order $10^{-7}$.
We investigate the effects of pseudoscalar-photon mixing on electromagnetic radiation in the presence of correlated extragalactic magnetic fields. We model the Universe as a collection of magnetic domains and study the propagation of radiation through them. This leads to correlations between Stokes parameters over large scales and consistently explains the observed large-scale alignment of quasar polarizations at different redshifts within the framework of the big bang model.
We present our model-independent and data-driven method to describe pseudoscalar meson transition form factors in the space- and (low-energy) time-like regions. The method is general and conforms a toolkit applicable to any other form factor, of one and two variables, with the potential to include both high- and low-energy QCD constraints altogether. The method makes use of analyticity and unitary properties of form factors, it is simple, systematic and can be improved upon by including new data. In the present discussion, the method is used to show the impact of experimental data for precision calculations in the low-energy sector of the Standard Model. In particular, due to its relevance for New Physics searches, we have considered the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon (the pseudoscalar exchange contribution), the pseudoscalar decays into lepton pairs, and the determination of the mixing parameters of the $eta$ and $eta$ system. For all of them we provide the most updated results in a data-driven manner.
Recent literature has shown that photon-photon forward scattering mediated by Euler-Heisenberg interactions may generate some amount of the circular polarization ($V$ modes) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. However, there is an apparent contradiction among the different references about the predicted level of the amplitude of this circular polarization. In this work, we will resolve this discrepancy by showing that with a quantum Boltzmann equation formalism we obtain the same amount of circular polarization as using a geometrical approach that is based on the index of refraction of the cosmological medium. We will show that the expected amplitude of $V$ modes is expected to be $approx$ 8 orders of magnitude smaller than the amplitude of $E$-polarization modes that we actually observe in the CMB, thus confirming that it is going to be challenging to observe such a signature. Throughout the paper, we also develop a general method to study the generation of $V$ modes from photon-photon and photon-spin-1-massive-particle forward scatterings without relying on a specific interaction, which thus represent possible new signatures of physics beyond the Standard Model.
When the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics was introduced, it was to explain the observed phenomena of quark confinement and scaling. It was then discovered that the emergence of instantons is an essential consequence of this theory. This led to unanticipated explanations not only for the anomalously high masses of the $eta$ and the $eta$ particles, but also for the remarkable differences that had been observed in the mixing angles for the pseudoscalar mesons and the vector mesons.
We present algorithms that interleave photon radiation from the final state and the initial state with the QCD evolution in the antenna-based Vincia parton shower. One of the algorithms incorporates the complete soft and collinear structure associated with photon emission, but may be computationally expensive, while the other approximates the soft structure at a lower cost. Radiation from fermions and W bosons is included, and a strategy for photon radiation off leptons below the hadronization scale is set up. We show results of the application of the shower algorithms to Drell-Yan and WW production at the LHC, showing the impact of the inclusion of the full soft structure and treatment of radiation off W bosons.