Cerenkov Radiation in a Lorentz-Violating and Birefringent Vacuum

TL;DR

This paper calculates the spectrum of vacuum Cerenkov radiation within Lorentz-violating electrodynamics, including cases with birefringence, providing new insights into photon emission spectra under these conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a unified approach to compute Cerenkov radiation spectra in Lorentz-violating theories, including the first analysis with birefringent photon modifications.

Findings

Confirmed previous results on Cerenkov radiation in Lorentz-violating models.

First calculation of Cerenkov spectrum with birefringent photon k_F term.

Derived the lower-energy spectrum in the birefringent case.

Abstract

We calculate the emission spectrum for vacuum Cerenkov radiation in Lorentz-violating extensions of electrodynamics. We develop an approach that works equally well if the presence or the absence of birefringence. In addition to confirming earlier work, we present the first calculation relevant to Cerenkov radiation in the presence of a birefringent photon k_F term, calculating the lower-energy part of the spectrum for that case.