Related papers: Using nonlinear Breit-Wheeler to test nonlinear va…
We suggest an experiment to observe vacuum birefringence induced by intense laser fields. A high-intensity laser pulse is focused to ultra-relativistic intensity and polarizes the vacuum which then acts like a birefringent medium. The…
Electron-positron pairs are produced through the Breit-Wheeler process when energetic photons traverse electromagnetic fields of sufficient strength. Here we consider a possible experimental geometry for observation of pair creation in the…
Motivated by recent experimental initiatives, such as at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), we calculate the birefringent scattering of x-rays at the combined…
In this paper we propose an all-optical vacuum birefringence experiment and evaluate its feasibility for various scenarios. Many petawatt-class lasers became operational and many more are expected to enter operation in the near future,…
We study the perspectives of measuring the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence predicted by quantum electrodynamics using an x-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) alone. We devise an experimental scheme allowing the XFEL beam to collide with…
We propose a novel technique that promises hope of being the first to directly detect a polarization in the quantum electrodynamic (QED) vacuum. The technique is based upon the use of ultra-short pulses of light circulating in low…
A possible setup for the experimental verification of linear Breit-Wheeler pair creation of electrons and positrons in photon-photon collisions is studied theoretically. It combines highly energetic bremsstrahlung photons, which are assumed…
Vacuum magnetic birefringence is one of the most interesting non-linear phenomena in quantum electrodynamics because it is a pure photon-photon result of the theory and it directly signalizes the violation of the classical superposition…
Ninety years after their prediction, quantum vacuum nonlinearities in macroscopic electromagnetic fields still await a direct experimental verification in the laboratory. A particularly promising route towards their first measurement is the…
The generalized Breit-Wheeler process, i.e. the emission of $e^+e^-$ pairs off a probe photon propagating through a polarized short-pulsed electromagnetic (e.g.\ laser) wave field, is analyzed. We show that the production probability is…
We describe the principle and the status of the PVLAS experiment which is presently running at the INFN section of Ferrara, Italy, to detect the magnetic birefringence of vacuum. This is related to the QED vacuum structure and can be…
The pair beaming in the Breit-Wheeler (BW) process is investigated. We examine the effect of the BW differential cross section on pair angular and energy distributions. Although, this study is relevant for laser induced intense gamma-ray…
We argue that the phenomenon of vacuum birefringence in strong inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields can be most efficiently analyzed in terms of a vacuum emission process. In this contribution, we exemplarily stick to the case of vacuum…
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 nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process is studied in the presence of strong and short laser pulses. We show that for a relativistically intense plane-wave laser field many features of the momentum distribution of the produced electron-positron…
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…
Electron-positron pair creation occurs throughout the universe in the environments of extreme astrophysical objects, such as pulsar magnetospheres and black hole accretion disks. The difficulty of emulating these environments in the…
The Breit-Wheeler process which produces matter and anti-matter from photon collisions is investigated experimentally through the observation of 6085 exclusive electron-positron pairs in ultra-peripheral Au+Au collisions at…
Vacuum polarization, an effect predicted nearly 70 years ago, is still yet to be directly detected despite significant experimental effort. Previous attempts have made use of large liquid-helium cooled electromagnets which inadvertently…
The only available analytical framework for investigating QED processes in a strong laser field systematically relies on approximating the latter as a plane wave. However, realistic high-intensity laser beams feature much more complex…