Some effects of vacuum polarization in QED due to the presence of field sources are investigated. We focus on effects with no counter-part in Maxwell electrodynamics. The the Uehling interaction energy between two stationary point-like charges is calculated exactly in terms of Meijer-G functions. Effects induced on a hydrogen atom by the vacuum polarization in the vicinity of a Dirac string are considered. We also calculate the interaction between two parallel Dirac strings and corrections to the energy levels of a quantum particle constrained to move on a ring circumventing a solenoid.
We investigate topological effects of a cosmic string and compactification of a spatial dimension on the vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the energy-momentum tensor for a fermionic field in (4+1)-dimensional locally AdS spacetime. The contribution induced by the compactification is explicitly extracted by using the Abel-Plana summation formula. The mean energy-momentum tensor is diagonal and the vacuum stresses along the direction perpendicular to the AdS boundary and along the cosmic string are equal to the energy density. All the components are even periodic functions of the magnetic fluxes inside the string core and enclosed by compact dimension, with the period equal to the flux quantum. The vacuum energy density can be either positive or negative, depending on the values of the parameters and the distance from the string. The topological contributions in the VEV of the energy-momentum tensor vanish on the AdS boundary. Near the string the effects of compactification and gravitational field are weak and the leading term in the asymptotic expansion coincides with the corresponding VEV in (4+1)-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. At large distances, the decay of the cosmic string induced contribution in the vacuum energy-momentum tensor, as a function of the proper distance from the string, follows a power law. For a cosmic string in the Minkowski bulk and for massive fields the corresponding fall off is exponential. Within the framework of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the geometry for conformal field theory on the AdS boundary corresponds to the standard cosmic string in (3+1)-dimensional Minkowski spacetime compactified along its axis.
In spatially structured strong laser fields, quantum electrodynamical vacuum behaves like a nonlinear Kerr medium with modulated third-order susceptibility where new coherent nonlinear effects arise due to modulation. We consider the enhancement of vacuum polarization and magnetization via coherent spatial vacuum effects in the photon-photon interaction process during scattering of a probe laser beam on parallel focused laser beams. Both processes of elastic and inelastic four wave-mixing in structured QED vacuum accompanied with Bragg interference are investigated. The phase-matching conditions and coherent effects in the presence of Bragg grating are analyzed for photon-photon scattering.
We study the fermionic condensate (FC) and the vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the energy-momentum tensor for a massive spinor field in the de Sitter (dS) spacetime including an ideal cosmic string. In addition, spatial dimension along the string is compactified to a circle of length $L$. The fermionic field is assumed to obey quasi-periodic condition along the $z$-axis. There are also magnetic fluxes running along the cosmic string and enclosed by the compact dimension. Both, the FC and the VEV of the energy-momentum tensor, are decomposed into two parts: one induced by the cosmic string in dS spacetime considering the absence of the compactification, and another one induced by the compactification. In particular, we show that the FC vanishes for a massless fermionic field.
In order to reduce the current hadronic uncertainties in the theory prediction for the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, lattice calculations need to reach sub-percent accuracy on the hadronic-vacuum-polarization contribution. This requires the inclusion of $mathcal{O}(alpha)$ electromagnetic corrections. The inclusion of electromagnetic interactions in lattice simulations is known to generate potentially large finite-size effects suppressed only by powers of the inverse spatial extent. In this paper we derive an analytic expression for the $mathrm{QED}_{mathrm{L}}$ finite-volume corrections to the two-pion contribution to the hadronic vacuum polarization at next-to-leading order in the electromagnetic coupling in scalar QED. The leading term is found to be of order $1/L^{3}$ where $L$ is the spatial extent. A $1/L^{2}$ term is absent since the current is neutral and a photon far away thus sees no charge and we show that this result is universal. Our analytical results agree with results from the numerical evaluation of loop integrals as well as simulations of lattice scalar $U(1)$ gauge theory with stochastically generated photon fields. In the latter case the agreement is up to exponentially suppressed finite-volume effects. For completeness we also calculate the hadronic vacuum polarization in infinite volume using a basis of 2-loop master integrals.
We have updated our evaluation of the hadronic contribution to the running of the QED fine structure constant using the recent precise measurements of the e+e- annihilation at the center-of-mass (c.m.s.) energy region between 2.6 and 3.65 GeV performed by the BES collaboration. In the low energy region, around the rho resonance, we include the recent measurements from the BABAR, CDM-2, KLOE and SND collaborations. We obtain Delta alpha (5)_had (s) = 0.02750 +/- 0.00033 at s = m_Z^2.