Probing semi-macroscopic vacua by high fields of lasers

TL;DR

This paper proposes using high-power laser fields to detect nonlinear photon interactions in vacuum, aiming to observe quantum electrodynamics effects and search for light-mass fields over large spacetime scales.

Contribution

It introduces novel laser-based measurement techniques to probe vacuum nonlinearities and expands the experimental parameter space for detecting QED effects and light-mass fields.

Findings

Potential detection of Euler-Heisenberg nonlinearities in vacuum.

Enhanced sensitivity for probing light-mass fields.

New experimental regimes for photon nonlinearity exploration.

Abstract

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 scattering process. With the recent advancement in high power high energy laser and the examples of the nonlinearity study of laser-matter interaction by virtue of properly arranging laser and detectors, we envision the possibility of probing nonlinearities of photon interaction in vacuum over substantial spacetime scales compared with the microscopic scale provided by high energy accelerators. The hithertofore never detected Euler-Heisenberg nonlinearities in quantum electrodynamics (QED) in vacuum should come within our reach of detection using intense laser fields. Also our method should put us in a position with a far greater sensitivity of probing possible light-mass fields that have been postulated. With the availability of a large number of coherent photons our suggested measurement methods include the phase sensitive (contrast) imaging that avoids the pedestal noise and the scheme of second harmonic detection of photon nonlinearities in vacuum over a long co-propagating distance incurring resonance excitation. These methods carve out a substantial swath of new experimental parameter regimes of the exploration of photon nonlinearities in vacuum covering the force range from the electron mass scale to below neV.