Foundations of Electromagnetism, Equivalence Principles and Cosmic Interactions

Abstract

We look at the foundations of electromagnetism in this chapter of the "eletromagnetism" book. For doing this, after some review (constraints on photon mass etc.), we use two approaches. The first one is to formulate a Parametrized Post-Maxwellian framework to include QED corrections and a pseudoscalar photon interaction. We discuss various vacuum birefringence experiments - ongoing and proposed - to measure these parameters. The second approach is to look at electromagnetism in gravity and various experiments and observations to determine its empirical foundation. We found that the foundation is solid with the only exception of a potentially possible pseudoscalar-photon interaction. We discussed its experimental constraints and look forward to more future experiments.