Evidence of Light-by-light scattering by ATLAS

[mfb]

For centuries, scientists argued whether light was waves or particles. Light scattering with other light would favor the particle concept. Today we know both models are wrong, but quantum electrodynamics also predicts this scattering - just with an incredibly tiny rate, so it has never been observed before. Lead-lead collisions at the LHC allow a search for it: if the nuclei just pass each other without a direct collision, the intense electromagnetic fields around them can lead to photon-photon interactions. Typically electron/positron pairs are produced, but sometimes the product are photons again.

ATLAS searched for events with two photons and nothing else in the detector (meaning the lead nuclei stayed intact). The expected number of background events (other processes looking like the signal) was 2.7, the expected number of signal events was 7.3, and ATLAS saw 13 events. The significance is 4.4 sigma - the probability of getting 13 background events with just 2.7 expected is very small.
As comparison: Those 13 events were the needle in a haystack of a few billion more violent nucleus-nucleus collisions.

If you think the Higgs took long to discover: 60 years is short compared to the centuries needed to see light-by-light scattering.

CMS should have a similar dataset, but no public result yet. Apart from that, improving the measurements will need more lead-lead collisions, currently scheduled for the end of 2018.CERN Courier article
ATLAS note

 

[Vanadium 50]

There is a discussion here that discusses similar points if the mentors don't want to move it.

I don't understand your point about the particle nature of light. LbyL occurs because of a purely quantum effect: vacuum polarization. Strong fields - in this case, 10^25 V/m - polarize the vacuum, and this allows for various non-linear effects. This one, in fact, is among the more difficult to see. Anyway, while the effect does not appear classically, one can add it in by hand to the classical field equations (Jackson does this in chapter 1) and one gets scattering of light waves by light waves.

 

[mfb]

This statement is from a classical, pre-1900 world view. Classical particles can lead to scattering (and if you think of them as "atoms of light", solid objects of finite size, it is unavoidable), classical linear waves cannot. And no one saw nonlinear effects of light back then.

 

[Vanadium 50]

In 1881 (after Heaviside notation was invented) one could have written down the following expression for light:

$$\vec{D} =\epsilon_0 \left((1+\alpha (E^2-B^2))\vec{E} + \beta(\vec{E} \cdot \vec{B}) \vec{B} \right)$$

Here α and β are just parameters. In Maxwell's theory they are both zero, but a completely consistent theory of light can be made for other values. (This is essentially the theory of classical light in a classical medium - the word "photon" never appears. To measure α, you would do experiments like measuring the speed of light in an electric or magnetic field. To measure β, you do light by light scattering. As I said before, classically, β=0. In QED,

$$\beta = 7 \frac{16\pi}{45} \frac{\alpha_{em}^2}{m_e^4}$$

The ATLAS measurement says that the coefficient 7 has been measured to be something like 10 +/- 5, but zero can be excluded at 4.4 standard deviations.

No photons required. Just 1881 physics.

 

[mfb]

You expect scattering with particles, but with waves you have to add the scattering manually (and make light nonlinear). I did not say waves would be excluded, I said scattering would favor the particle concept.

 

[Vanadium 50]

and make light nonlinear

But that's the beauty of this measurement! Light really is non-linear! The point of this measurement is not to add fuel to the fire in a 300-year old (and now-settled) argument. It's that Maxwell's Equations are not the classical limit of QED, and that we finally have a measurement that shows this. Pretty cool, huh?

 

[RGevo]

Is the observed running of the qed coupling also evidence?

 

[atyy]

I don't understand your point about the particle nature of light. LbyL occurs because of a purely quantum effect: vacuum polarization. Strong fields - in this case, 10^25 V/m - polarize the vacuum, and this allows for various non-linear effects.

But that's the beauty of this measurement! Light really is non-linear! The point of this measurement is not to add fuel to the fire in a 300-year old (and now-settled) argument. It's that Maxwell's Equations are not the classical limit of QED, and that we finally have a measurement that shows this. Pretty cool, huh?

If Maxwell's equations are not the classical limit of QED, then wouldn't LbyL not be a purely quantum effect?

Is it true that Maxwell's equations are not the classical limit of QED? I guess classical limit means $\hbar \rightarrow 0$?

 

[atyy]

For centuries, scientists argued whether light was waves or particles. Light scattering with other light would favor the particle concept.

Couldn't LbyL be described by nonlinear waves?

 

[Vanadium 50]

If Maxwell's equations are not the classical limit of QED, then wouldn't LbyL not be a purely quantum effect?

We can spend a lot of time discussing words that describe the equations, but the reality is the equations. The effect is purely quantum mechanical, yes, but it ends up appearing on a macroscopic scale. Like I wrote in post #4, one can write down a general expression for the classical polarization tensor, and you get different predictions from the QED classical limit than you do from Maxwell. Now this difference is visible.

 

[atyy]

We can spend a lot of time discussing words that describe the equations, but the reality is the equations. The effect is purely quantum mechanical, yes, but it ends up appearing on a macroscopic scale. Like I wrote in post #4, one can write down a general expression for the classical polarization tensor, and you get different predictions from the QED classical limit than you do from Maxwell. Now this difference is visible.

By quantum, is it right to say that LbyL appears at loop level in the QED expansion (ie. not at tree level, which in QED is typically the classical term)?

 

[mfb]

Sure.

Couldn't LbyL be described by nonlinear waves?

Yes, see posts 2-5 for a discussion.

 

[Vanadium 50]

LbyL appears at loop level in the QED expansion

Yes, it appears at one loop.

 

[vanhees71]

Yes, at leading order the four-photon vertex, describing scattering of light by light, is a set of box diagrams of order $e^4$. There is no renormalizable four-photon vertex at tree level. That's why it doesn't occur in the fundamental QED Lagrangian (assuming that QED should be a renormalizable QFT). Power counting shows that each box diagram is logarithmically divergent, which smells like desaster, because since there's no renormalizable gauge invariant four-photon term to put as counter term it seems as if QED is inconsistent. However, gauge symmetry comes to a rescue. If you take all the box diagrams together, as you must do to be consistent at the one-loop order (i.e., the order $\hbar$ in the loop expansion of the proper vertex functions), the result turns out to be finite due to a Ward-Takahashi identity that follows from electromagnetic gauge invariance. So the scattering of light by light is a clear prediction of a pure quantum effect in renormalizable QED.

Historically, it's also a result of one of the first calculations of an effective low-energy QFT by Euler and Heisenberg (1936). In modern terms it's "integrating out the electrons". The Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian provides the higher-order non-renormalizable terms in the quantum action (which is the pendant of the classical action, including quantum effects and is in fact the generating functional for proper vertex functions), leading to non-linear field equations. Effectively that means to contract the boxes to a point, which is possible at very low scattering energies of photons by photons (the "high-energy" scale in this approach is the electron mass).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler–Heisenberg_Lagrangian

 

[mfb]

Effectively that means to contract the boxes to a point, which is possible at very low scattering energies of photons by photons (the "high-energy" scale in this approach is the electron mass).

At low energies the process hasn't been observed yet - the ATLAS study looks for multi-GeV-photons., 4 orders of magnitude above the electron mass.

 

[vanhees71]

Sure, it's amazing that ATLAS could do it at the high photon energies. For ultrasoft photons (with energies at the order of below 511 keV) I'm pretty sure there's no chance.

 

[mfb]

At very low energies, the cross section is $\displaystyle \frac{\alpha^4 s^3}{m_e^8}$, with red lasers (800 nm) we get s=(3 eV)^2, and a cross section of the order of 10^-64 m² = 10^-20 fb (a few million times the Planck area).

Slide 13 in this presentation shows that ~1PW lasers should be sufficient to get scattering (without saying anything about the focusing). There are a few lasers with such a power, but the extreme light infrastructure plans to get much more powerful lasers, with a peak power of 10+ PW, later up to 200 PW (http://www.eli-beams.eu/science/lasers/ ). This is more than the total power of sunlight hitting the Earth - but the laser has this just for a femtosecond every 10 seconds. That power should be sufficient to get many scattering pairs.

 

[Vanadium 50]

How good is the vacuum in these systems? The problem with these very low cross-sections is that a single atom in the area of convergence can produce many times as much scattering. (Put another way, a single atom changes the properties of the medium more than the quantum corrections do). One advantage of working at the GeV scale is that atomic effects are much smaller.

The question of whether ATLAS could see 1/2 MeV photons came up. The answer is no. ATLAS wasn't even designed to do this measurement. One could certainly design an experiment that would do this - the challenge would be to maintain this level of performance when also blasted a billion times by energetic lead-lead collisions. But why? If you're interested in vacuum polarization, there are much better ways to do this: lepton magnetic moments, for example. The measurement is neat - it shows directly at low precision what we knew indirectly at high precision - but it is sort of a dead end scientifically.

If you like, it tells us that the LQP - the lightest charged particle - is the electron. Nice, but it closes the book on that line of speculation.

 

[vanhees71]

Well, sure, the evidence for the correctness of QED at the many-loop level is in precision experiments like the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron and muon or the Lamb shift. Nevertheless it's fascinating that you also can also directly measure the light-by-light scattering process directly.

 

[mfb]

Scattering with an atom should produce a different angular distribution, and you have to subtract background anyway (also from scattering at material elsewhere).
If they can make the spectrum narrow enough (=>pulse length has to go up) while keeping a reasonable intensity, they can also cross the lasers at an angle, and observe scattered photons at different energies depending on their direction.

Sure, electron g-2 experiments test the same vertices, but measuring something in a new way is always nice.

 

[Vanadium 50]

. Nevertheless it's fascinating that you also can also directly measure the light-by-light scattering process directly.

I agree. But I don't think you learn anything with 1000 events that you didn't learn with 13.

 

[mfb]

You get better limits on deviations from QED at this particular process. In addition, the energy range the LHC probes is different from g-2 experiments.

As a random other example, the LHC experiments also look for H->eµ although muon decay experiments set much more sensitive limits on it already. Why? Because we might not understand how BSM physics works.

 

[fluidistic]

Apparently this experiment is not the first to show an evidence of light-by-light scattering. http://physics.stackexchange.com/a/1364/75916

 

[mfb]

The SLAC experiment had light producing electron plus positron (something the LHC also saw years ago if I remember correctly). The recent LHC result is the first measurement of light->light scattering.

 

[Vanadium 50]

You get better limits on deviations from QED at this particular process. In addition, the energy range the LHC probes is different from g-2 experiments.

Up to a challenge? Can you write down a Lagrangian that shows an observable deviation in LbyL at the LHC but leaves the fermion magnetic moments consistent with their measured values? I don't think this is possible - at least not without a multiway conspiracy of cancellations.

 

[mfb]

I cannot, but I have seen theorists writing down things for superluminal neutrinos. If the LHC would find a deviation, I'm sure theorists would find something within days.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

I cannot, but I have seen theorists writing down things for superluminal neutrinos. If the LHC would find a deviation, I'm sure theorists would find something within days.

:-D LOL
It makes you think how much does their work have any merits on experiments... :-D

 

[atyy]

You get better limits on deviations from QED at this particular process. In addition, the energy range the LHC probes is different from g-2 experiments.

As a random other example, the LHC experiments also look for H->eµ although muon decay experiments set much more sensitive limits on it already. Why? Because we might not understand how BSM physics works.

How about LbyL versus muon g-2?

 

[RockyMarciano]

We can spend a lot of time discussing words that describe the equations, but the reality is the equations. The effect is purely quantum mechanical, yes, but it ends up appearing on a macroscopic scale. Like I wrote in post #4, one can write down a general expression for the classical polarization tensor, and you get different predictions from the QED classical limit than you do from Maxwell. Now this difference is visible.

Yes the difference is visible, making the reality of the equations evident. Let's reflect on what this means. Here we don't simply have a quantum correction that gives you different decimals in a calculation. This is showing how the inexistent 0-loop interaction between 2 photons happens to become an existent interaction with enough energy at one loop. A supposedly purely perturbative effect(that is usually depicted graphically with the appearance of inexistent virtual pairs) is giving us a certainly non-perturbative visible effect.
Theorists will mention things like external/global anomalies but how does an experimentalist explain this to avoid mentioning lack of unitarily equivalence between 0-loop and one-loop?

Yes, at leading order the four-photon vertex, describing scattering of light by light, is a set of box diagrams of order $e^4$. There is no renormalizable four-photon vertex at tree level. That's why it doesn't occur in the fundamental QED Lagrangian (assuming that QED should be a renormalizable QFT). Power counting shows that each box diagram is logarithmically divergent, which smells like desaster, because since there's no renormalizable gauge invariant four-photon term to put as counter term it seems as if QED is inconsistent. However, gauge symmetry comes to a rescue. If you take all the box diagrams together, as you must do to be consistent at the one-loop order (i.e., the order $\hbar$ in the loop expansion of the proper vertex functions), the result turns out to be finite due to a Ward-Takahashi identity that follows from electromagnetic gauge invariance. So the scattering of light by light is a clear prediction of a pure quantum effect in renormalizable QED.

Of course gauge invariance is enforced at the relevant order. But could you elaborate on the importance of the fact that al these nice consistency checks (unitarity and lorentz invariance, gauge invariance) are only valid up to loop order in the renormalized theory and how this is relevant or irrelevant for the symmetries of the S-matrix Dyson-Wick's expansion as a whole?

 

[vanhees71]

I cannot, but I have seen theorists writing down things for superluminal neutrinos. If the LHC would find a deviation, I'm sure theorists would find something within days.

Well, but what was written about superluminal neutrinos during the OPERA hype was more embarassing for theorists than anything else .