34,925 research outputs found
A Comment on "A note on polarized light from Magnetars: QED effects and axion-like particles" by L.M. Capparelli, L. Maiani and A.D. Polosa
The recent detection of a large polarization degree in the optical emission
of an isolated neutron star led to the suggestion that this has been the first
evidence of vacuum polarization in a strong magnetic field, an effect predicted
by quantum electrodynamics but never observed before. This claim was challanged
in a paper by Capparelli, Maiani & Polosa (2017), according to whom a much
higher polarization degree would be necessary to positively identify vacuum
polarization. Here we show that their conclusions are biased by several
inadequate assumptions and have no impact on the original claim.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Evidence of vacuum birefringence from the polarisation of the optical emission from an Isolated Neutron Star
Isolated Neutron Stars are some of the most exciting stellar objects known to
astronomers: they have the most extreme magnetic fields, with values up to
G, and, with the exception of stellar-mass black holes, they are the
most dense stars, with densities of g cm. As such,
they are perfect laboratories to test theories of electromagnetism and nuclear
physics under conditions of magnetic field and density unattainable on Earth.
In particular, the interaction of radiation with strong magnetic fields is the
cause of the {\em vacuum birefringence}, an effect predicted by quantum
electrodynamics in 1936 but that lacked an observational evidence until now.
Here, we show how the study of the polarisation of the optical radiation from
the surface of an isolated neutron star yielded such an observational evidence,
opening exciting perspectives for similar studies at other wavelengths.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, Contributed to the 13th Patras Workshop on Axions,
WIMPs and WISPs, Thessaloniki, May 15 to 19, 201
Exploring Rigidly Rotating Vortex Configurations and their Bifurcations in Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates
In the present work, we consider the problem of a system of few vortices as it emerges from its experimental realization in the field of atomic
Bose-Einstein condensates. Starting from the corresponding equations of motion,
we use a two-pronged approach in order to reveal the configuration space of the
system's preferred dynamical states. On the one hand, we use a Monte-Carlo
method parametrizing the vortex "particles" by means of hyperspherical
coordinates and identifying the minimal energy ground states thereof for and different vortex particle angular momenta. We then complement this
picture with a dynamical systems analysis of the possible rigidly rotating
states. The latter reveals all the supercritical and subcritical pitchfork, as
well as saddle-center bifurcations that arise exposing the full wealth of the
problem even at such low dimensional cases. By corroborating the results of the
two methods, it becomes fairly transparent which branch the Monte-Carlo
approach selects for different values of the angular momentum which is used as
a bifurcation parameter.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. New improved result
Ghost excitonic insulator transition in layered graphite
Some unusual properties of layered graphite, including a linear energy
dependence of the quasiparticle damping and weak ferromagnetism at low doping,
are explained as a result of the proximity of a single graphene sheet to the
excitonic insulator phase which can be further stabilized in a doped system of
many layers stacked in the staggered () configuration
Ground State Properties of Anderson Impurity in a Gapless Host
Using the Bethe ansatz method, we study the ground state properties of a
Anderson impurity in a ``gapless'' host, where a density of band
states vanishes at the Fermi level as . As
in metals, the impurity spin is proven to be screened at arbitrary parameters
of the system. However, the impurity occupancy as a function of the bare
impurity energy is shown to acquire novel qualitative features which
demonstrate a nonuniversal behavior of the system. The latter explains why the
Kondo screening is absent (or exists only at quite a large electron-impurity
coupling) in earlier studies based on scaling arguments.Comment: 5 pages, no figure, RevTe
Absence of dynamical gap generation in suspended graphene
There is an interesting proposal that the long-range Coulomb interaction in
suspended graphene can generate a dynamical gap, which leads to a
semimetal-insulator phase transition. We revisit this problem by solving the
self-consistent Dyson-Schwinger equations of wave function renormalization and
fermion gap. In order to satisfy the Ward identity, a suitable vertex function
is introduced. The impacts of singular velocity renormalization and dynamical
screening on gap generation are both included in this formalism, and prove to
be very important. We obtain a critical interaction strength, , which is larger than the physical value for suspended
graphene. It therefore turns out that suspended graphene is a semimetal, rather
than insulator, at zero temperature.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
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