The strong electromagnetic fields generated by PW and multi-PW lasers make the particle dynamics become radiation dominated, i.e., the recoil during the photon emission significantly changes the particle momentum. In such fields, photons decay into electron-positron pairs potentially giving rise to lepton-photon plasma. Though these interactions are described in the framework of Quantum Electrodynamics, the presence of the strong EM field significantly changes the development and rates of the corresponding processes if one compares them to those without the field. Thus, they occupy a region in the Standard Model parameter space, which is largely unexplored both theoretically and experimentally. The utilization of the PWclass laser facilities, such as ZEUS at the University of Michigan and L3-HAPLS at ELI-BL,makes it possible to venture deeper into the unexplored parameter space.
Strong field QED plasma physics at and beyond PW-class laser facilities
Abstract