Upcoming and planned experiments combining increasingly intense lasers and energetic
particle beams will access new regimes of nonlinear, relativistic, quantum effects. This …

The field of laser-matter interaction traditionally deals with the response of atoms, molecules,
and plasmas to an external light wave. However, the recent sustained technological …

Prolific electron-positron pair production is possible at laser intensities approaching 10 24 W
cm-2 at a wavelength of 1 μ m. An analysis of electron trajectories and interactions at the …

Various fundamental-physics experiments such as measurement of the magnetic
birefringence of the vacuum, searches for ultralight dark-matter particles (eg, axions), and …

When exposed to intense electromagnetic fields, the quantum vacuum is expected to exhibit
properties of a polarizable medium akin to a weakly nonlinear dielectric material. Various …

Quantum field theory predicts that the vacuum exhibits a nonlinear response to strong
electromagnetic fields. This fundamental tenet has remained experimentally challenging …

In a previous paper [GV Dunne and C. Schubert, Phys. Rev. D 72, 105004 (2005). PRVDAQ
0556-2821 10.1103/PhysRevD. 72.105004], it was shown that the worldline expression for …

In this report we show that a vacuum is a nonlinear optical medium and discuss what the
optical phenomena are that should exist in the framework of the standard model of particle …

These notes provide a pedagogical introduction to the theoretical study of vacuum
polarization effects in strong electromagnetic fields as provided by state-of-the-art high …

Vacuum birefringence is governed by the amplitude for a photon to flip helicity or
polarization state in an external field. Here, we calculate the flip and nonflip amplitudes in …