Speaker
Description
We survey advances in EM vacuum structure building bridges between QED and QCD: High-precision vacuum birefringence experimental environments allow the probing of QED and are also sensitive to virtual axions, particles invented to rescue parity symmetry in strong interactions/QCD. Currently we explore the possible effects of short-lived or confined axions, which otherwise escape experiments depending on real, free streaming axions. Turning to strong EM field environments relevant to magnetars and heavy-ion collisions, description of the QED vacuum response requires higher-order reducible loop contributions. A nonperturbative framework for evaluating such contributions also allows the exploration of large coupling strength α, possibly leading to an improved understanding of everlasting vacuum structure in strong field QED and the
Savvidy model in QCD.
