Bending of light in a Coulomb Gas

TL;DR

This paper explores how photons bend in a Coulomb gas, proposing that the collective effect significantly amplifies the bending angle compared to a single nucleus, potentially aiding experimental detection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism where a Coulomb gas amplifies photon bending, making the effect more observable than in isolated nuclear fields.

Findings

Coulomb gas increases photon bending proportionally to the square root of travel distance.

Amplification can be orders of magnitude over single nucleus bending.

Potential for experimental detection of Coulombic bending effects.

Abstract

Photons traveling in a background electromagnetic field may bend via the vacuum polarization effect with the background field. The bending in a Coulomb field by a heavy nucleus is small even at a large atomic number, rendering it difficult to detect experimentally. As an amplifying mechanism of the effect we consider the bending of light traveling in a chamber of Coulomb gas. The Gaussian nature of the bending in the gas increases the total bending angle in proportion to the square root of the photon travel distance. The enhancement can be orders of magnitude over the bending by a single nucleus at a small impact parameter, which may help experimental observation of the Coulombic bending.