Polarization Formalism for Photon-Gravitational Wave Mixing Around Magnetars

Abstract: The Gertsenshtein effect can be used to probe the stochastic gravitational wave background at high frequencies, well above the range of standard cosmological sources. In this paper, we revisit the conversion between electromagnetic and gravitational waves in the magnetosphere of magnetars by solving the evolution equations of the associated Stokes parameters. In the process, we point out that the adiabatic approximation usually taken in the literature is not generally justified in the context of the Gertsenshtein effect. To derive analytical results, we focus our attention on two specific geometries where the adiabatic approximation is valid. From these, we derive a lower bound on the stochastic gravitational wave background from the conversion of magnetar electromagnetic emission into gravitational waves, and an upper bound by requiring that the conversion of background gravitational waves into electromagnetic radiation does not exceed the observed magnetar flux in the X-ray band. Our results demonstrate that gravitational waves generated through the Gertsenshtein conversion of magnetar electromagnetic emission produce a negligible stochastic background, as anticipated.