Magnetars as Laboratories for Strong Field QED [HEAP]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2112.02460


A strong electromagnetic field polarizes the vacuum and in the presence of an electric field creates pairs of a charged particle and its anti-particle. Magnetars, highly magnetized neutron stars with magnetic field comparable to or greater than the Schwinger field, give a significant amount of the vacuum polarization and vacuum birefringence and the induced electric field can create the electron-positron pairs, which are strong field quantum electrodynamics (QED) processes. In this paper, we use a closed formula for the one-loop effective action in the presence of a supercritical magnetic field and a subcritical electric field, find the vacuum birefringence analytically and numerically, and then discuss possible measurements in magnetars.

Read this paper on arXiv…

C. Kim and S. Kim
Tue, 7 Dec 21
40/91

Comments: Proceedings for the 17th Italian-Korean Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, Korea, August 2-6, 2021; 8 pages, three figures