Part I: Don't Shake That Solenoid Too Hard: Particle Production from Aharonov-Bohm

          @misc{ scivideos_PIRSA:10110056,
            doi = {10.48660/10110056},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/10110056},
            author = {Chu, Yi-Zen},
            keywords = {Cosmology},
            language = {en},
            title = {Part I: Don{\textquoteright}t Shake That Solenoid Too Hard: Particle Production from Aharonov-Bohm},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics},
            year = {2010},
            month = {nov},
            note = {PIRSA:10110056 see, \url{https://scivideos.org/pirsa/10110056}}
          }
          

Abstract

Five decades ago, Aharonov and Bohm illustrated the indispensable role of the vector potential in quantum dynamics by showing (theoretically) that scattering electrons around a solenoid, no matter how thin, would give rise to a non-trivial cross section that had a periodic dependence on the product of charge and total magnetic flux. (This periodic dependence is due to the topological nature of the interaction.) We extend the Aharonov-Bohm analysis to the field theoretic domain: starting with the quantum vacuum (with zero particles) we compute explicitly the rate of production of electrically charged particle-antiparticle pairs induced by shaking a solenoid at some fixed frequency. (This body of work can be found in arXiv: 0911.0682 and 1003.0674.) Part II: The N-Body Problem in General Relativity from Perturbative QFT In the second portion of the talk, I will describe how one may use methods usually associated with perturbative quantum field theory to develop what is commonly known as the post-Newtonian program in General Relativity -- the weak field, non-relativistic, gravitational dynamics of compact astrophysical objects. The 2 body aspect of the problem is a large industry by now, driven by the need to model the gravitational waves expected from compact astrophysical binaries. I will discuss my efforts to generalize these calculations to the N-body case. (This work can be found in arXiv: 0812.0012.)