Asymmetric excitation of left- vs right-handed photons in accelerating waveguides

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04188v1
• Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2025 19:03:52 GMT
• Title: Asymmetric excitation of left- vs right-handed photons in accelerating waveguides
• Authors: Adrian del Rio,
• Abstract summary: duality symmetry of Maxwell's equations in vacuum implies that the circular polarization $Q$ of classical electromagnetic waves is conserved.<n>Previous studies have shown that its expectation value is not conserved for observers propagating in a gravitational field.<n>Here, we show that this Noether symmetry can also be realized in empty waveguides with duality-preserving boundary conditions.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: The electromagnetic duality symmetry of Maxwell's equations in vacuum implies that the circular polarization $Q$ of classical electromagnetic waves is conserved. In quantum field theory, the normal-ordered operator $\hat Q$ represents the difference between the number operators of right- and left-handed photons. Previous studies have shown that its expectation value is not conserved for observers propagating in a gravitational field. Here, we show that this Noether symmetry can also be realized in empty waveguides with duality-preserving boundary conditions, and we quantize the source-free Maxwell theory inside a long, cylindrical waveguide undergoing both linear and rotational acceleration from rest. In the vacuum $|0\rangle$ associated to inertial observers, we find that the expectation value $\langle 0| \hat Q |0\rangle $ fails to be conserved for observers co-moving with the waveguide. In particular, frame-dragging effects induce a spectral asymmetry between the right- and left-handed field modes at late times. As a consequence, accelerated detectors co-moving with the rotating waveguide can detect photon-pair excitations from the quantum vacuum, exhibiting an imbalance between opposite helicity modes. This is a relativistic quantum effect, which shows that the classical conservation law associated with duality symmetry is broken in the quantum theory even in flat spacetime, provided we work with non-inertial systems. Our analysis provides a concrete proof of concept for testing this effect in analogue gravity platforms.

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