Seventeenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting

Finding upper bounds on the Bopp length in Bopp-Podolsky theory

12 Jul 2024, 15:00

25m

M1 (Palazzo Micara of the ‘Gabriele d’Annunzio’ University)

Invited talk in a parallel session Extended theories of electromagnetism and their impact on laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations Extended theories of electromagnetism and their impact on laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations

Speaker

Volker Perlick

Description

The Bopp-Podolsky theory is a gauge-invariant and Lorentz-invariant theory of electromagnetism that introduces a new hypothetical constant of Nature with the dimension of a length, called the Bopp length. The theory was introduced by Bopp in 1940, and independently by Podolsky in 1942, in order to cure the infinite field energies of point charges. If one sets the Bopp length equal to zero one recovers the standard Maxwell vacuum theory. In this talk I discuss several methods of how to give upper bounds on the Bopp length on the basis of experiments and observations with present or future technologies. It is demonstrated that the strictest bounds are provided by atomic spectroscopy.