External Fields as a Probe for Fundamental Physics

Quantum vacuum experiments are becoming a flexible tool for investigating fundamental physics. They are particularly powerful for searching for new light but weakly interacting degrees of freedom and are thus complementary to accelerator-driven experiments. I review recent developments in this field, focusing on optical experiments in strong electromagnetic fields. In order to characterize potential optical signatures, I discuss various low-energy effective actions which parameterize the interaction of particle-physics candidates with optical photons and external electromagnetic fields. Experiments with an electromagnetized quantum vacuum and optical probes do not only have the potential to collect evidence for new physics, but special-purpose setups can also distinguish between different particle-physics scenarios and extract information about underlying microscopic properties.Comment: 12 pages, plenary talk at QFEXT07, Leipzig, September 200

Electrodynamics of a Cosmic Dark Fluid

Cosmic Dark Fluid is considered as a non-stationary medium, in which electromagnetic waves propagate, and magneto-electric field structures emerge and evolve. A medium - type representation of the Dark Fluid allows us to involve into analysis the concepts and mathematical formalism elaborated in the framework of classical covariant electrodynamics of continua, and to distinguish dark analogs of well-known medium-effects, such as optical activity, pyro-electricity, piezo-magnetism, electro- and magneto-striction and dynamo-optical activity. The Dark Fluid is assumed to be formed by a duet of a Dark Matter (a pseudoscalar axionic constituent) and Dark Energy (a scalar element); respectively, we distinguish electrodynamic effects induced by these two constituents of the Dark Fluid. The review contains discussions of ten models, which describe electrodynamic effects induced by Dark Matter and/or Dark Energy. The models are accompanied by examples of exact solutions to the master equations, correspondingly extended; applications are considered for cosmology and space-times with spherical and pp-wave symmetries. In these applications we focused the attention on three main electromagnetic phenomena induced by the Dark Fluid: first, emergence of Longitudinal Magneto-Electric Clusters; second, generation of anomalous electromagnetic responses; third, formation of Dark Epochs in the Universe history.Comment: 39 pages, 0 figures, replaced by the version published in MDPI Journal "Symmetry" (Special Issue: Symmetry: Feature Papers 2016); typos correcte

Foundations of Electromagnetism, Equivalence Principles and Cosmic Interactions

We look at the foundations of electromagnetism in this chapter of the "eletromagnetism" book. For doing this, after some review (constraints on photon mass etc.), we use two approaches. The first one is to formulate a Parametrized Post-Maxwellian framework to include QED corrections and a pseudoscalar photon interaction. We discuss various vacuum birefringence experiments - ongoing and proposed - to measure these parameters. The second approach is to look at electromagnetism in gravity and various experiments and observations to determine its empirical foundation. We found that the foundation is solid with the only exception of a potentially possible pseudoscalar-photon interaction. We discussed its experimental constraints and look forward to more future experiments.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, 2 pages, it is written as a chapter for the book "Electromagnetism" (ISBN 979-953-307-400-8) to be published by INTECH (open access), December, 201