Modified light cone condition via vacuum polarization in a time dependent field

Abstract

The appearance of unconventional vacuum properties in intense fields has long been an active field of research. In this paper the vacuum polarization effect is investigated via a pump probe scheme of a probe light propagating in the vacuum excited by two counter-propagating laser beams. The modified light cone condition of the probe light is derived analytically for the situation that it passes through the electric/magnetic antinode plane of the pump field. The derivation does not follow the commonly adopted assumption of treating the pump field as a constant field. Differences from the conventional light cone conditions are identified. The implications of the result are discussed with a consideration of the vacuum birefringence measurement.