New Strong-Field QED Effects at ELI: Nonperturbative Vacuum Pair Production

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of the ELI project to experimentally observe and analyze nonperturbative vacuum pair production effects in strong-field QED, a phenomenon that is theoretically challenging to understand and has yet to be experimentally confirmed.

Contribution

It reviews existing theoretical tools and presents new results related to nonperturbative vacuum pair production in the context of the ELI laser facility.

Findings

ELI could enable observation of nonperturbative pair production.

New theoretical methods have been developed for analyzing these effects.

The paper highlights the importance of strong-field QED phenomena in laser science.

Abstract

Since the work of Sauter, and Heisenberg, Euler and K\"ockel, it has been understood that vacuum polarization effects in quantum electrodynamics (QED) predict remarkable new phenomena such as light-light scattering and pair production from vacuum. However, these fundamental effects are difficult to probe experimentally because they are very weak, and they are difficult to analyze theoretically because they are highly nonlinear and/or nonperturbative. The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project offers the possibility of a new window into this largely unexplored world. I review these ideas, along with some new results, explaining why quantum field theorists are so interested in this rapidly developing field of laser science. I concentrate on the theoretical tools that have been developed to analyze nonperturbative vacuum pair production.