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15 - General Engineering
Lancaster University
Charged relativistic fluids and non-linear electrodynamics
High fields in vacuo lead to a breakdown of classical electrodynamics due to pair creation. It has been surmised that a breakdown of the classical linear vacuum Maxwell equations arises before advent of quantum effects, the occurrence of which would herald a revolution in quantum electrodynamics. The non-linear electrodynamics of Born-Infeld has received little experimental attention. This paper sought to design an experiment with unambiguous support for the theory, predicting that light travels at less than 3 x 10^8 m/s in a vacuum containing a static magnetic field. Experimentalists at Birmingham, CERN and Cockcroft are currently exploring this experimentally.