ABSTRACT
We report on the resonant Fabry Perot cavity of the PVLAS (Polarization of the Vacuum with LASer) experiment operating at λ = 1064 nm with a record decay time of 2.7 ms, a factor more than two larger than any previously reported optical resonator. This corresponds to a coherence length of 8.1 · 10(5) m. The cavity length is 3.303 m, and the resulting finesse is 770,000.
ABSTRACT
We report the experimental observation of a light polarization rotation in vacuum in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. Assuming that data distribution is Gaussian, the average measured rotation is (3.9 +/- 0.5) x 10(-12) rad/pass, at 5 T with 44 000 passes through a 1 m long magnet, with lambda = 1064 nm. The relevance of this result in terms of the existence of a light, neutral, spin-zero particle is discussed.
