Anisotropic Optical Response of Dense Quark Matter under Rotation: Compact Stars as Cosmic Polarizers

Abstract

Quantum vortices in the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase of QCD have bosonic degrees of freedom, called the orientational zero modes, localized on them. We show that the orientational zero modes are electromagnetically charged. As a result, a vortex in the CFL phase nontrivially interacts with photons. We show that a lattice of vortices acts as a polarizer of photons with wavelengths larger than some critical length.