Magnetized matter effects on dilaton photon mixing

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dilatons interact with photons in magnetized matter, revealing a complex 3x3 mixing matrix and showing that oscillations between photon polarizations and dilatons do not exhibit periodic behavior, with implications for astrophysical observations.

Contribution

It introduces a 3x3 mixing matrix for dilaton-photon interactions in magnetized matter based on symmetry considerations, expanding understanding of scalar-photon mixing phenomena.

Findings

No periodic oscillation length in general parameter regimes.

Photon-dilaton mixing involves all three polarization states.

Potential astrophysical signatures discussed.

Abstract

Dilatons ($\phi(x)$) are a class of bosonic scalar particles associated with scaling symmetry and its compensation (under the violations of the same). Due to two photon coupling, they can produce optical signatures in a magnetic field. In vacuum or plain matter they couple to one of the transversely polarized state of the photon. But in a magnetized matter, they couple to both the transversely polarized state of photon (due to emergence of a parity violating part of photon self energy contribution from a magnetized matter). A part of this work is directed towards understanding the issue of mixing of scalar with various polarizations states of photon in a medium ( magnetized or unmagnetized ) due to the constraints from different discrete (CPT) symmetries associated with the interaction. Based on these symmetry aided arguments, the structure of the mixing matrix is found to be $3 \times 3$. Thus there exists non-zero finite probabilities of oscillation between different polarization states of photon to dilaton. Our analytical and numerical analysis show no existence of periodic oscillation length either in temporal or spatial direction for most general values of the parameters in the theory. Possible astrophysical consequences of these results, those can be detected through observations are discussed.