Vacuum birefringence, the photon anomalous magnetic moment and the neutron star RX J1856.5−3754

Authors

Sree Ram Valluri, University of Western OntarioFollow
J.W. Mielniczuk
Farrukh Chishtie, University of Western OntarioFollow
D. Lamm
S. Auddy, The University of Western Ontario

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-17-2017

Journal

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Volume

472

Issue

2

First Page

2398

Last Page

2402

URL with Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2105

Abstract

We analyse the spectrum of the Hamiltonian of a photon propagating in a strong magnetic field B ∼ B_cr, where Bcr=m2e≃4.4×1013" role="presentation">Bcr=m2e≃4.4×1013 G is the Schwinger critical field. We show that the anomalous magnetic moment of a photon in the one-loop approximation is a non-decreasing function of the magnetic field B in the range 0 ≤ B ≤ 30 B_cr. We provide a numerical representation of the expression for the anomalous magnetic moment in terms of special functions. We find that the anomalous magnetic moment μ_γ of a photon for B = 30 B_cr is 8/3 of the anomalous magnetic moment of a photon for B = 1/2B_cr. Based on the recent observational evidence for vacuum birefringence from the neutron star RX J1856.5−3764 by Mignani et al., we suggest vacuum birefringence, the anomalous magnetic moment of the photon and the Faraday rotation angle as key observables for future experiments and measurements.

Notes

This article was originally published in MNRAS and is available at https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2105

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