21–29 Aug 2019
Europe/Athens timezone
ICNFP 2019 follows HiX 2019 (also at the OAC), Int. Workshop devoted to Nucleon Structure at Large Bjorken-x (https://indico.cern.ch/event/799284/overview). Related ICNFP Session organized with HiX 2019 convenors will take place the 22-23 August

Optics and magnetic fields for fundamental physics

23 Aug 2019, 15:00
30m
Room 1

Room 1

Speaker

Prof. Guido Zavattini (Universita e INFN, Ferrara (IT))

Description

In recent years precision optics together with strong magnetic fields have become key ingredients for fundamental physics experiments searching, for example, for vacuum magnetic birefringence and for axions and/or axion-like particles. Vacuum magnetic birefringence (polarisation dependent refractive index) is a macroscopic non-linear electrodynamic effect in vacuum predicted as a consequence of the formulation of the Euler-Kockel-Heisenberg effective Lagrangian, first proposed in 1935, which takes into account electron-positron fluctuations. A direct laboratory observation of vacuum magnetic birefringence is still lacking today due to its minute value: ∆n = 4x10e-24 @ B = 1T. Axions and axion-like particles are light neutral hypothetical bosons which could couple to two photons through the Primakoff effect. The existence of these hypothetical particles could solve the strong CP problem and are good dark matter candidates. I will describe some recent experimental results and proposals regarding these two areas of research. Key experimental ingredients in such researches are a Fabry-Perot interferometer, an intense magnetic field and a time-dependent effect.

Primary author

Prof. Guido Zavattini (Universita e INFN, Ferrara (IT))

Presentation materials