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 …

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 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 produces a differential phase between orthogonally polarized
components of a weak electromagnetic probe in the presence of a strong electromagnetic …

We study the feasibility of measuring vacuum birefringence by probing the focus of a high-
intensity optical laser with an x-ray free electron laser (XFEL). This amounts to performing a …

A long-standing prediction of quantum electrodynamics, yet to be experimentally observed,
is the interaction between real photons in vacuum. As a consequence of this interaction, the …

A bstract We study the effective interactions of external electromagnetic fields induced by
fluctuations of virtual particles in the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics. Our main focus is …