Related papers: Photon-photon scattering at the high-intensity fro…
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…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations give rise to effective non-linear interactions between electromagnetic fields. A prominent signature of quantum vacuum nonlinearities driven by macroscopic fields are signal photons differing in characteristic…
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…
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,…
These notes provide a pedagogical introduction to the theoretical study of vacuum polarization effects in strong electromagnetic fields as provided by state-of-the-art high-intensity lasers. Quantum vacuum fluctuations give rise to…
The fundamental theory of quantum electrodynamics predicts the vacuum to resemble a polarizable medium. This gives rise to effective nonlinear interactions between electromagnetic fields and light-by-light scattering phenomena. We study the…
High power short pulse lasers provide a promising route to study the strong field effects of the quantum vacuum, for example by direct photon-photon scattering in the all-optical regime. Theoretical predictions based on realistic laser…
The invention of laser immediately enabled us to detect nonlinearities of photon interaction in matter, as manifested for example by Franken et al.'s detection of second harmonic generation and the excitation of the Brillouin forward…
We calculate signals of real photon-photon scattering in the collision of three laser pulses. Taking goal parameters from the Station of Extreme Light at the upcoming Shanghai Coherent Light Source, we consider two scenarios: i) the…
When photons propagate in vacuum they may fluctuate into matter pairs thus allowing the vacuum to be polarised. This linear effect leads to charge screening and renormalisation. When exposed to an intense background field a nonlinear effect…
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…
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…
Up to date, quantum electrodynamics (QED) is the most precisely tested quantum field theory. Nevertheless, particularly in the high-intensity regime it predicts various phenomena that so far have not directly been accessible in all-optical…
Real photon-photon scattering is a long-predicted phenomenon that is being searched for in experiment in the form of a birefringent vacuum at optical and X-ray frequencies. We present results of calculations and numerical simulations for a…
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…
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…
In this paper we will show that photon-photon collision experiments using extreme lasers can provide measurable effects giving fundamental information about the essence of QED, its Lagrangian. A possible scenario with two counterpropagating…
We investigate the nonlinear Compton photon source for upcoming laser-particle experiments in the collision scenario of high-energy electron beams and relativistic laser pulses. The stronger laser field could not only improve the scattering…
We study the nonlinear QED signature of x-ray vacuum diffraction in the head-on collision of optical high-intensity and x-ray free-electron laser pulses at finite spatio-temporal offsets between the laser foci. The high-intensity laser…
We demonstrate that tailored laser beams provide a powerful means to make quantum vacuum signatures in strong electromagnetic fields accessible in experiment. Typical scenarios aiming at the detection of quantum vacuum nonlinearities at the…