English

Measuring Vacuum Polarisation with High Power Lasers

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2016-03-08 v1 Optics Plasma Physics

Abstract

When exposed to intense electromagnetic fields, the quantum vacuum is expected to exhibit properties of a polarisable medium akin to a weakly nonlinear dielectric material. Various schemes have been proposed to measure such vacuum polarisation effects using a combination of high power lasers. Motivated by several planned experiments, we provide an overview of experimental signatures that have been suggested to confirm this prediction of quantum electrodynamics of real photon-photon scattering.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.08456,
  title  = {Measuring Vacuum Polarisation with High Power Lasers},
  author = {B. King and T. Heinzl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.08456},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

13 pages, 11 figures, invited paper to High Power Laser Science and Engineering

R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:31:28.560Z