Birefringent Electroweak Textures

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electromagnetic waves behave when passing through a topologically stable electroweak string network, revealing that it causes polarization-dependent propagation, acting as a birefringent medium.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of electroweak textures acting as birefringent media and analyzes their impact on electromagnetic wave propagation.

Findings

Photon propagation speed depends on polarization.

The network causes polarization-dependent birefringence.

Birefringent scale varies with wave frequency and network size.

Abstract

The behaviour of electromagnetic waves propagating through an electroweak homilia string network is examined. This string network is topologically stable as a cosmic texture, and is characterized by the spatial variation of the isospin rotation of the Higgs field. As a consequence the photon field couples to the intermediate vector bosons, producing a finite range electromagnetic field. It is found that the propagation speed of the photon depends on its polarization vector, whence an homilia string network acts as a birefringent medium. We estimate the birefringent scale for this texture and show that it depends on the frequency of the electromagnetic wave and the length scale of the homilia string network.