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.
{ "_oai": { "updated": "2022-04-05T09:39:49Z", "id": "oai:repo.scoap3.org:64463", "sets": [ "PRL" ] }, "authors": [ { "raw_name": "Chong-Sun Chu", "affiliations": [ { "country": "Taiwan", "value": "Department of Physics, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan and Center for Theory and Computation, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan" } ], "surname": "Chu", "given_names": "Chong-Sun", "full_name": "Chu, Chong-Sun" }, { "raw_name": "Chun-Hei Leung", "affiliations": [ { "country": "Taiwan", "value": "Department of Physics, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan and Center for Theory and Computation, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan" } ], "surname": "Leung", "given_names": "Chun-Hei", "full_name": "Leung, Chun-Hei" } ], "titles": [ { "source": "APS", "title": "Induced Quantized Spin Current in Vacuum" } ], "dois": [ { "value": "10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.111601" } ], "publication_info": [ { "journal_volume": "127", "journal_title": "Physical Review Letters", "material": "article", "journal_issue": "11", "year": 2021 } ], "$schema": "http://repo.scoap3.org/schemas/hep.json", "acquisition_source": { "date": "2022-04-05T09:21:01.830473", "source": "APS", "method": "APS", "submission_number": "a0d20d20b4c111ec837fd6d834be26e1" }, "page_nr": [ 7 ], "license": [ { "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "license": "CC-BY-4.0" } ], "copyright": [ { "statement": "Published by the American Physical Society", "year": "2021" } ], "control_number": "64463", "record_creation_date": "2021-09-07T14:30:03.295658", "_files": [ { "checksum": "md5:3cdf8007d31c3237846d658be88c8f20", "filetype": "pdf", "bucket": "8a21b5f2-910a-4d8d-b89d-86ac89aef372", "version_id": "7143a903-a308-49a7-8edc-7e09463f9a2c", "key": "10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.111601.pdf", "size": 242327 }, { "checksum": "md5:b4d42ef4fa7c4e6746e154b6e1487d4b", "filetype": "xml", "bucket": "8a21b5f2-910a-4d8d-b89d-86ac89aef372", "version_id": "11974e88-8da1-482c-94c6-45b494f17a93", "key": "10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.111601.xml", "size": 113893 } ], "collections": [ { "primary": "HEP" }, { "primary": "Citeable" }, { "primary": "Published" } ], "arxiv_eprints": [ { "categories": [ "hep-ph", "cond-mat.other", "hep-ex", "hep-th" ], "value": "2105.00148" } ], "abstracts": [ { "source": "APS", "value": "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." } ], "imprints": [ { "date": "2021-09-07", "publisher": "APS" } ] }