Photon polarization tensor in circularly polarized Hermite- and Laguerre-Gaussian beams

TL;DR

This paper derives analytical formulas for the photon polarization tensor in circularly polarized Hermite- and Laguerre-Gaussian beams, extending previous results for linear polarization within a locally constant field approximation in QED.

Contribution

It provides the first analytical expressions for photon polarization tensors in circularly polarized LG and HG beams, expanding the understanding of quantum electrodynamics in structured light fields.

Findings

Analytical expressions for photon polarization tensor in specific beam types.

Results applicable to slowly varying electromagnetic fields in QED.

Extension of previous linear polarization results to circular polarization.

Abstract

We derive analytical expressions for the photon polarization tensor in circularly polarized Hermite- and Laguerre-Gaussian beams, complementing the corresponding results for linearly polarized beams obtained recently. As they are based upon a locally constant field approximation of the one-loop Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian for quantum electrodynamics (QED) in constant fields, our results are generically limited to slowly varying electromagnetic fields, varying on spatial (temporal) scales much larger than the Compton wavelength (time) of the electron.