Related papers: Probing semi-macroscopic vacua by high fields of l…
The invention of the laser immediately enabled the detection of nonlinear photon-matter interactions, as manifested for example by Franken et al.'s detection of second-harmonic generation. With the recent advancement in high-power,…
Our goal is to study optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearities in strong macroscopic electromagnetic fields provided by high-intensity laser beams. The vacuum emission scheme is perfectly suited for this task as it naturally…
In vacuum high-intensity lasers can cause photon-photon interaction via the process of virtual vacuum polarization which may be measured by the phase velocity shift of photons across intense fields. In the optical frequency domain, the…
Upcoming high-intensity laser systems will be able to probe the quantum-induced nonlinear regime of electrodynamics. So far unobserved QED phenomena such as the discovery of a nonlinear response of the quantum vacuum to macroscopic…
Vacuum fluctuations give rise to effective nonlinear interactions between electromagnetic fields. These generically modify the characteristics of light traversing a strong-field region. X-ray free-electron lasers constitute a particularly…
The tremendous progress in high-intensity laser technology and the establishment of dedicated high-field laboratories in recent years have paved the way towards a first observation of quantum vacuum nonlinearities at the high-intensity…
Recent simulations show that very large electric and magnetic fields near the kilo Tesla strength will likely be generated by ultra-intense lasers at existing facilities over distances of hundreds of microns in underdense plasmas. Stronger…
The properties of four-wave interaction via the nonlinear quantum vacuum is investigated. The effect of the quantum vacuum is to generate photons with new frequencies and wave vectors, due to elastic photon-photon scattering. An expression…
Quasi-elastic scattering processes have long been thought of providing the most promising signal for a first experimental detection of quantum vacuum nonlinearity. A prominent example of such a process is vacuum birefringence. However,…
A nonlinear interaction between photons is observed in a process that involves charge sources. To observe this process in a vacuum, there are a growing number of theoretical and experimental studies. This process may contain exotic…
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…
We show that coherent harmonic focusing provides an efficient mechanism to boost all-optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearity in the collision of high-intensity laser fields, thereby offering a promising route to their first…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts the vacuum to behave as a non-linear medium, including effects such as birefringence. However, for experimentally available field strengths, this vacuum polarizability is extremely small and thus very hard…
The strong non-linearity plays a significant role in physics, particularly, in designing novel quantum sources of light and matter as well as in quantum chemistry or quantum biology. In simple systems, the photon-photon interaction can be…
A long-standing prediction of quantum electrodynamics, yet to be experimentally observed, is the interaction between real photons in vacuum. As a consequence of this interaction, the vacuum is expected to become birefringent and dichroic if…
We review the theory for photon-photon scattering in vacuum, and some of the proposals for its experimental search, including the results of our recent works on the subject. We then describe a very simple and sensitive proposal of an…
In spatially structured strong laser fields, quantum electrodynamical vacuum behaves like a nonlinear Kerr medium with modulated third-order susceptibility where new coherent nonlinear effects arise due to modulation. We consider the…
We study all-optical signatures of the effective nonlinear couplings among electromagnetic fields in the quantum vacuum, using the collision of two focused high-intensity laser pulses as an example. The experimental signatures of quantum…
In a recent paper, we have shown that the QED nonlinear corrections imply a phase correction to the linear evolution of crossing electromagnetic waves in vacuum. Here, we provide a more complete analysis, including a full numerical solution…
Semiclassical methods are used to study the nonlinear interaction of light in vacuum in the context of four wave mixing. This study is motivated by a desire to investigate the possibility of using recently developed powerful ultrashort…