Photon interactions with superconducting topological defects

TL;DR

This paper investigates how photons interact with topological defects like domain walls, vortices, and monopoles in a superconducting context, revealing reflection and scattering behaviors that could have astrophysical implications.

Contribution

It introduces a toy model for photon-defect interactions where photons gain mass in defect cores, analyzing their propagation and scattering with various topological defects.

Findings

Domain walls reflect most low-frequency photons, suggesting potential astrophysical signals.

Vortex interactions are similar to massive scalar particles, with comparable scattering.

Monopole cross-section scales with its geometrical area, affecting photon scattering.

Abstract

Using a toy model for the interactions between a defect-forming field and the photon field where the photon becomes massive in the defect core (motivated by recent work on defects in the 2HDM), we study the impact on photon propagation in the background of the defect. We find that, when the photon frequency (in natural units) is much lower than the symmetry breaking scale, domain walls reflect most of an incoming photon signal leading to potential interesting astrophysical signals. We also adapt the calculations for vortices and monopoles. We find that the case of strings is very similar to the standard case for massive scalar particles, but in the case of monopoles the cross-section is proportional to the geometrical area of the monopole.