Published January 28, 2020
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Electromagnetic solitons in quantum vacuum

Creators

  • 1. Russian Academy of Sciences
  • 2. Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics
  • 3. University of Pisa
  • 4. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
  • 5. Institute of Physics of the ASCR, ELI–Beamlines project, Na Slovance 2, 18221 Prague, Czech Republic
  • 6. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 7. National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST), Kansai Photon Science Institute, 8–1–7 Umemidai, Kizugawa, Kyoto 619–0215, Japan
  • 8. Vavilov State Optical Institute

Description

In the limit of extremely intense electromagnetic fields the Maxwell equations are modified due to the photon-photon scattering that makes the vacuum refraction index depend on the field amplitude. In the presence of electromagnetic waves with small but finite wave numbers the vacuum behaves as a dispersive medium. We show that the interplay between the vacuum polarization and the nonlinear effects in the interaction of counter-propagating electromagnetic waves can result in the formation of Kadomtsev-Petviashvily solitons and, in one-dimension configuration, of Korteveg-de-Vries type solitons that can propagate over a large distance without changing their shape.
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