Electromagnetic shift arising from the Heisenberg-Euler dipole

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that photons can experience redshift or blueshift when interacting with overcritical dipole fields due to quantum electrodynamics effects, with potential magnitudes comparable to gravitational redshift in magnetars.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of photon frequency shifts caused by quantum vacuum polarization effects in strong electromagnetic fields, correcting previous literature inaccuracies.

Findings

Photon shifts depend on polarization and azimuthal angle.

Shifts can be comparable to gravitational redshift in magnetar environments.

The study refines previous theoretical models of photon-field interactions.

Abstract

We show that photons may be redshifted or blueshifted when interacting with the field of an overcritical dipole, which incorporates the one-loop QED corrections coming from vacuum polarization. Using the effective metric, it follows that such effect depends on the polarization of the photon. The shifts, plotted against the azimuthal angle for various values of the magnetic field, may show an intensity comparable to the gravitational redshift for a magnetar. To obtain these results, we have corrected previous literature.