ORCID
- B. King: 0000-0003-4489-8468
Abstract
Upcoming and planned experiments combining increasingly intense lasers and energetic particle beams will access new regimes of nonlinear, relativistic, quantum effects. This improved experimental capability has driven substantial progress in QED in intense background fields. We review here the advances made during the last decade, with a focus on theory and phenomenology. As ever higher intensities are reached, it becomes necessary to consider processes at higher orders in both the number of scattered particles and the number of loops, and to account for non-perturbative physics (e.g. the Schwinger effect), with extreme intensities requiring resummation of the loop expansion. In addition to increased intensity, experiments will reach higher accuracy, and these improvements are being matched by developments in theory such as in approximation frameworks, the description of finite-size effects, and the range of physical phenomena analysed. Topics on which there has been substantial progress include: radiation reaction, spin and polarisation, nonlinear quantum vacuum effects and connections to other fields including physics beyond the Standard Model.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2023-04-13
Publication Title
Physics Reports
Volume
1010
ISSN
0370-1573
Acceptance Date
2023-01-30
Deposit Date
2023-04-17
Embargo Period
2023-04-18
Funding
We thank Tom Heinzl, Holger Gies, Arseny Mironov and Suo Tang for many useful comments and discussions. The authors are supported by the MEPhI Program Priority 2030 [AF], Russia, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, grant No. 20-52-12046 [AF], the STFC, UK consolidated grant ST/X000494/1 [AI], the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), grant No. 416607684 within the Research Unit FOR2783/1 [FK], the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2121 “Quantum Universe” – 390833306 [BK], the RIKEN special postdoctoral researcher program [HT], Japan, the Nonequilibrium working group at RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences [HT], Japan , and the Swedish Research Council , contract 2020-04327 [GT].
Keywords
QED, Intense fields, Laser physics, Non-perturbative effects, Schwinger effect, Nonlinear QED, Strong-field QED, Resummation, Light-by-light, Heisenberg–Euler, Effective field theory, Background fields
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
First Page
1
Last Page
138
Recommended Citation
Fedotov, A., Ilderton, A., Karbstein, F., King, B., Seipt, D., Taya, H., & Torgrimsson, G. (2023) 'Advances in QED with intense background fields', Physics Reports, 1010, pp. 1-138. Available at: 10.1016/j.physrep.2023.01.003
