40 research outputs found
To rescue a star
Massless neutrinos are exchanged in a neutron star, leading to long range
interactions. Many body forces of this type follow and we resum them. Their net
contribution to the total energy is negligible as compared to the star mass.
The stability of the star is not in danger, contrary to recent assertions.Comment: 10 pages, Latex2e, two figure
Faraday effect : a field theoretical point of view
We analyze the structure of the vacuum polarization tensor in the presence of
a background electromagnetic field in a medium. We use various discrete
symmetries and crossing symmetry to constrain the form factors obtained for the
most general case. From these symmetry arguments, we show why the vacuum
polarization tensor has to be even in the background field when there is no
background medium. Taking then the background field to be purely magnetic, we
evaluate the vacuum polarization to linear order in it. The result shows the
phenomenon of Faraday rotation, i.e., the rotation of the plane of polarization
of a plane polarized light passing through this background. We find that the
usual expression for Faraday rotation, which is derived for a non-degenerate
plasma in the non-relativistic approximation, undergoes substantial
modification if the background is degenerate and/or relativistic. We give
explicit expressions for Faraday rotation in completely degenerate and
ultra-relativistic media.Comment: 20 pages, Latex, uses axodraw.st