Extreme Light and Quantum Fields - a podcast by Michael Haack

2015 is the International Year of Light, and of its purposes is “to raise
awareness of optical technologies”. One such technology, high-powerlasers of the petawatt class and beyond, provides the most intense light sources created by humankind so far. The intensities and field
strengths in question are in excess of 1022 W/cm2 and 1014 V/m, respectivelymagnitudes that correspond to concentrating the total solar
radiation on a pinhead. This talk will present an overview of the usesand consequences of such extreme environments within the realm of
particle physics. The relevant theory is strong-field QED, with thelaser beams providing a rather peculiar electromagnetic background
field. The magnitudes above are such that a nonperturbative treatmentof the background becomes a necessity. Using appropriate theoretical
tools, a number of phenomena will be addressed, includingradiation reaction, nonlinear Thomson/Compton scattering, laserstimulated
pair production and photon-photon scattering. A particularincarnation of the latter, polarisation flip forward scattering,
or vacuum birefringence, will be discussed in some detail, with anoutlook on a planned experiment at the European XFEL at DESY.

Further episodes of Sommerfeld Theory Colloquium (ASC)

Further podcasts by Michael Haack

Website of Michael Haack