Photon self-interaction through gravitons and axions

Ahmad Hoseinpour; Moslem Zarei; Mehdi Abdi

doi:10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14116-x

2023 Impact factor 4.2

Particles and Fields

Open Access

Eur. Phys. J. C (2025) 85: 403
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-025-14116-x

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Photon self-interaction through gravitons and axions

Ahmad Hoseinpour¹^a, Moslem Zarei¹ and Mehdi Abdi¹^,2

¹ Department of Physics, Isfahan University of Technology, 84156-83111, Isfahan, Iran
² Wilczek Quantum Center, School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200240, Shanghai, China

^a ahmadhoseinpoor454@gmail.com

Received: 8 December 2024
Accepted: 21 March 2025
Published online: 9 April 2025

Abstract

In this work, we propose to employ the concept of photon self-interaction for axion detection. In particular, we derive the interaction Hamiltonian for photons via axions in a ring cavity. We show that when the incoming photons are considered in plane-wave basis, the interaction vanishes. However, when the realistic case of photon wavepackets are assumed, a self-interaction whose strength is proportional to the size of the wavepacket and the cavity length exists. Under specific conditions, we find that the axion-mediated interaction dominates the gravitationally induced self-interaction. We discuss the implications of this setup for axion detection, focusing on the range of axion mass, $10^{- 10} eV < m_{a} < 10^{- 4} eV$ $10^{-10}~\text {eV}<m_a<10^{-4}~\text {eV}$ for which the best accuracy of coupling constants is constrained in some cases to $g_{a γ γ} > 9 \times 10^{- 12} {GeV}^{- 1}$ $g_{a\gamma \gamma }> 9 \times 10^{-12}~ \text {GeV}^{-1}$ .

© The Author(s) 2025

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