Abstract:
Photon-photon scattering in empty space is an unpredictable process from the classical physics point of view, but it could be possible in the microscopic scale of the quantum world. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows the existence of particle-antiparticle production in a slight amount of time. The vacuum behaves like an electrically polarizable medium, so the photon-photon scattering in the vacuum is possible. This scattering is known to be a rare process in terms of experimental observation. In addition, this scattering is also famous for its notorious difficulty of calculation. In this thesis, we calculate photon-photon scattering amplitude with the aids of two advanced calculational methods. The first is the spinor-helicity amplitude method, and the second is amplitude reduction method of Ossola, Papadopoulos, and Pittau (OPP). We obtain the cross section of the photon-photon scattering both in the relativistic limit (high energy) and non-relativistic limit (low energy). The nonrelativistic result is comparable to the backbone result of Euler-Heisenberg, and the relativistic result is comparable to the famous result of Karplus and Neuman. Additionally, we also obtain the low energy contribution term beyond the Euler-Heisenberg result.