Vacuum magnetic linear birefringence using pulsed fields: the BMV experiment

TL;DR

This paper reports on the BMV experiment measuring vacuum magnetic linear birefringence using pulsed magnetic fields, achieving a sensitive measurement with detailed data analysis and a noise floor of approximately 8×10⁻²¹ T⁻².

Contribution

The paper presents the current status and methodology of the BMV experiment, including data acquisition, analysis procedures, and a measurement of vacuum magnetic birefringence with pulsed fields.

Findings

Measurement of vacuum magnetic birefringence with 200 pulses

Maximum magnetic field of 6.5 T achieved

Noise floor of about 8×10⁻²¹ T⁻² at 3σ confidence

Abstract

We present the current status of the BMV experiment. Our apparatus is based on an up-to-date resonant optical cavity coupled to a transverse magnetic field. We detail our data acquisition and analysis procedure which takes into account the symmetry properties of the raw data with respect to the orientation of the magnetic field and the sign of the cavity birefringence. The measurement result of the vacuum magnetic linear birefringence k_\mathrm{CM}$ presented in this paper was obtained with about 200 magnetic pulses and a maximum field of 6.5\,T, giving a noise floor of about $8 \times 10^{-21}$\,T$^{-2}$ at $3\sigma$ confidence level.