Induced Quantized Spin Current in Vacuum

Chong-Sun Chu (Department of Physics, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan and Center for Theory and Computation, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan) ; Chun-Hei Leung (Department of Physics, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan and Center for Theory and Computation, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan)

We uncover a fundamental effect of the QED vacuum in an external electromagnetic (EM) field. We show that the quantized vacuum of electrons is spin polarized by the EM field and manifests as a vacuum spin current. An experiment is proposed to measure the spin torque exerted by the spin current by measuring the twisted angle of the director axis of a nematic liquid crystal.

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Published on:
07 September 2021
Publisher:
APS
Published in:
Physical Review Letters , Volume 127 (2021)
Issue 11
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.111601
arXiv:
2105.00148
Copyrights:
Published by the American Physical Society
Licence:
CC-BY-4.0

Fulltext files: