LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED in electron-laser and photon-laser collisions

TL;DR

LUXE is a planned experiment at DESY Hamburg aiming to explore non-perturbative Quantum Electrodynamics by colliding high-intensity lasers with high-energy electrons and photons, potentially revealing phenomena like electron-positron pair creation from the vacuum.

Contribution

This paper introduces the LUXE experiment, a novel setup designed to probe strong-field QED effects in a regime previously inaccessible, including the measurement of positron production at unprecedented laser intensities.

Findings

Design of the LUXE experimental setup

Expected to measure positron production rates

Potential to test non-perturbative QED phenomena

Abstract

The LUXE experiment (Laser Und XFEL Experiment) is an experiment in planning at DESY Hamburg using the electron beam of the European XFEL (Eu.XFEL). LUXE is intended to study collisions between a high-intensity optical laser pulse and 16.5 GeV electrons from the Eu.XFEL electron beam, as well as collisions between the laser pulse and high-energy secondary photons. This will elucidate Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) at the strong-field frontier, where the electromagnetic field of the laser in the electron rest frame is above the Schwinger limit. In this regime, QED is non-perturbative in the charge field coupling. This manifests itself in the creation of physical electron-positron pairs from the QED vacuum, similar to Hawking radiation from black holes. LUXE intends to measure the positron production rate in an unprecedented laser intensity regime. It is expected to start running in 2025. An overview of the LUXE experimental setup and its challenges and progress will be given, along with a discussion of the expected physics reach in the context of testing QED in the non-perturbative regime.