Discovery of higher order QED effect for the vacuum pair production

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental evidence of higher order QED effects in vacuum pair production, showing that higher order calculations align with experimental data and resolve decades-long debates.

Contribution

It demonstrates the discovery of higher order QED effects in vacuum pair production, confirming theoretical predictions and advancing understanding of nonlinear QED phenomena.

Findings

Higher order QED calculations are about 20% higher than previous data.

Data is consistent with higher order QED results.

This discovery resolves longstanding debates in the field.

Abstract

The higher order quantum electrodynamics (QED) effect for vacuum pair production has been searched without success since 1954. In this paper, we show that the lowest order QED calculations for lepton pair vacuum production in heavy-ion collisions are about 20$\%$ higher than the combined world-wide data with a seven sigma-level of significance and the corresponding higher order QED results are consistent with data. We claim the discovery of higher order effect for the QED pair production, which settles the dust of previous debates for several decades. The verification of higher order QED effect is a fundamental scientific problem, which is an important milestone towards the nonperturbative and nonlinear regime of QED vacuum.