No Arabic abstract
Experimental bounds on induced vacuum magnetic birefringence can be used to improve present photon-photon scattering limits in the electronvolt energy range. Measurements with the PVLAS apparatus (E. Zavattini {it et al.}, Phys. Rev. D {bf77} (2008) 032006) at both $lambda = 1064$ nm and 532 nm lead to bounds on the parameter {it A$_{e}$}, describing non linear effects in QED, of $A_{e}^{(1064)} < 6.6cdot10^{-21}$ T$^{-2}$ @ 1064 nm and $A_{e}^{(532)} < 6.3cdot10^{-21}$ T$^{-2}$ @ 532 nm, respectively, at 95% confidence level, compared to the predicted value of $A_{e}=1.32cdot10^{-24}$ T$^{-2}$. The total photon-photon scattering cross section may also be expressed in terms of $A_e$, setting bounds for unpolarized light of $sigma_{gammagamma}^{(1064)} < 4.6cdot10^{-62}$ m$^{2}$ and $sigma_{gammagamma}^{(532)} < 2.7cdot10^{-60}$ m$^{2}$. Compared to the expected QED scattering cross section these results are a factor of $simeq2cdot10^{7}$ higher and represent an improvement of a factor about 500 on previous bounds based on ellipticity measurements and of a factor of about $10^{10}$ on bounds based on direct stimulated scattering measurements.
The MUNU experiment was carried out at the Bugey nuclear power reactor. The aim was the study of electron antineutrino-electron elastic scattering at low energy. The recoil electrons were recorded in a gas time projection chamber, immersed in a tank filled with liquid scintillator serving as veto detector, suppressing in particular Compton electrons. The measured electron recoil spectrum is presented. Upper limits on the neutrino magnetic moment were derived and are discussed.
Here we give a brief review on the current bounds on the general Majorana transition neutrino magnetic moments (TNMM) which cover also the conventional neutrino magnetic moments (NMM). Leptonic CP phases play a key role in constraining TNMMs. While the Borexino experiment is the most sensitive to the TNMM magnitudes, one needs complementary information from reactor and accelerator experiments in order to probe the complex CP phases.
The possibility of anisotropies in the speed of light relative to the limiting speed of electrons is considered. The absence of sidereal variations in the energy of Compton-edge photons at the ESRFs GRAAL facility constrains such anisotropies representing the first non-threshold collision-kinematics study of Lorentz violation. When interpreted within the minimal Standard-Model Extension, this result yields the two-sided limit of 1.6 x 10^{-14} at 95% confidence level on a combination of the parity-violating photon and electron coefficients kappa_{o+} and c. This new constraint provides an improvement over previous bounds by one order of magnitude.
We present new results based on the entire CHOOZ data sample. We find (at 90% confidence level) no evidence for neutrino oscillations in the anti_nue disappearance mode, for the parameter region given by approximately Delta m**2 > 7 x 10**-4 eV^2 for maximum mixing, and sin**2(2 theta) = 0.10 for large Delta m**2. Lower sensitivity results, based only on the comparison of the positron spectra from the two different-distance nuclear reactors, are also presented; these are independent of the absolute normalization of the anti_nue flux, the cross section, the number of target protons and the detector efficiencies.
In a recent paper, we have shown that the QED nonlinear corrections imply a phase correction to the linear evolution of crossing electromagnetic waves in vacuum. Here, we provide a more complete analysis, including a full numerical solution of the QED nonlinear wave equations for short-distance propagation in a symmetric configuration. The excellent agreement of such a solution with the result that we obtain using our perturbatively-motivated Variational Approach is then used to justify an analytical approximation that can be applied in a more general case. This allows us to find the most promising configuration for the search of photon-photon scattering in optics experiments. In particular, we show that our previous requirement of phase coherence between the two crossing beams can be released. We then propose a very simple experiment that can be performed at future exawatt laser facilities, such as ELI, by bombarding a low power laser beam with the exawatt bump.