English

Photon-photon scattering in collisions of laser pulses

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2012-10-02 v1

Abstract

A scenario for measuring the predicted processes of vacuum elastic and inelastic photon-photon scattering with modern lasers is investigated. Numbers of measurable scattered photons are calculated for the collision of two, Gaussian-focused, pulsed lasers. We show that a single 10PW optical laser beam split into two counter-propagating pulses is sufficient for measuring the elastic process. Moreover, when these pulses are sub-cycle, our results suggest the inelastic process should be measurable too.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1202.3339,
  title  = {Photon-photon scattering in collisions of laser pulses},
  author = {B. King and C. H. Keitel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1202.3339},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

23 pages, 15 figures