Static magnetic field vacuum birefringence measured at the QED value · revision history

Revision 2

Accepted · core change · record

Changes against revision 1:

Title
Static magnetic field vacuum birefringence measured at the QED value
Plain
A strong magnet should make the vacuum very slightly birefringent, by an amount far too small for any experiment so far. The question is whether any optical cavity experiment can reach the predicted value.
Precise · changed · core
Revision 1: For a static field $B \ll B_S = m^2 c^3/(e\hbar) \sim 4.4e13\,\mathrm{G}$, QED predicts $\Delta n = n_{\mathrm{par}} - n_{\mathrm{perp}} = (\alpha/(30\pi))(B/B_S)^2$, about $4e-24$ at $B = 1e4\,\mathrm{G}$. Determine whether a Fabry-Perot ellipsometer with rotating or modulated fields of $1e4-1e5\,\mathrm{G}$ can reach this value with $\text{signal-to-noise} > 5$, by identifying and suppressing the excess low-frequency noise that limited previous experiments, and measure $\Delta n$ to within 10%.
Revision 2: For a static field $B \ll B_S = m^2 c^3/(e\hbar) \sim 4.4 \times 10^{13}\,\mathrm{G}$, QED predicts $\Delta n = n_{\mathrm{par}} - n_{\mathrm{perp}} = (\alpha/(30\pi))(B/B_S)^2$, about $4 \times 10^{-24}$ at $B = 10^{4}\,\mathrm{G}$. Determine whether a Fabry-Perot ellipsometer with rotating or modulated fields of $10^{4}-10^{5}\,\mathrm{G}$ can reach this value with $\text{signal-to-noise} > 5$, by identifying and suppressing the excess low-frequency noise that limited previous experiments, and measure $\Delta n$ to within 10%.
Settled by
An ellipsometric measurement of $\Delta n/B^2$ consistent with the QED value at $5\sigma$, with the field-dependence verified.
Kind
well-posed
Answer type
yes-no
References
(empty)
Literature status
open
Status note · changed
Revision 1: PVLAS ended in 2020 with $\Delta n = (12 \pm 17)e-23$ at $B = 2.5e4\,\mathrm{G}$, a $1\,\sigma$ uncertainty about 7 times the QED value $2.5e-23$ (Ejlli et al., Physics Reports 2020).
Revision 2: PVLAS ended in 2020 with $\Delta n = (12 \pm 17)e-23$ at $B = 2.5 \times 10^{4}\,\mathrm{G}$, a $1\,\sigma$ uncertainty about 7 times the QED value $2.5 \times 10^{-23}$ (Ejlli et al., Physics Reports 2020).
Posed since
(empty)

Decisions