  We present a comprehensive and pedagogic discussion of the properties of
photons in cold and dense nuclear matter based on the resummed one-loop photon
self energy. Correlations between electrons, muons, protons and neutrons in
beta equilibrium that arise due to electromagnetic and strong interactions are
consistently taken into account within the random phase approximation.
Screening effects and damping as well as collective excitations are
systematically studied in a fully relativistic setup. Our study is relevant to
linear response theory of dense nuclear matter, calculations of transport
properties of cold dense matter and to investigations of the production and
propagation of hypothetical vector bosons such as the dark photons.
