Measuring the Boiling Point of the Vacuum of Quantum Electrodynamics

Abstract

It is a long-standing non-trivial prediction of quantum electrodynamics that its vacuum is unstable in the background of a static, spatially uniform electric field and, in principle, sparks with spontaneous emission of electron-positron pairs. However, an experimental verification of this prediction seems out of reach because a sizeable rate for spontaneous pair production requires an extraordinarily strong electric field strength $|\mathbf{E}|$ of order the Schwinger critical field, ${\mathrm{E}}_c=m_e^2/e\simeq 1.3\times 10^{18}V/m$, where $m_e$ is the electron mass and $e$ is its charge. Here, we show that the measurement of the rate of pair production due to the decays of high-energy bremsstrahlung photons in a high-intensity laser field allows for the experimental determination of the Schwinger critical field and thus the boiling point of the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics.

arXiv comment8 pages, 6 figures; extended discussion; corrected typos; corrected figure 5 and new figure 6; conclusions unchanged

References in corpus (23)

• Dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism
• Limitations on the attainable intensity of high power lasers
• Pair Production from Vacuum at the Focus of an X-Ray Free Electron Laser
• Catalysis of Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production
• Vacuum instability in external fields
• Finite size effects in stimulated laser pair production
• Complete QED theory of multiphoton trident pair production in strong laser fields
• Trident pair production in strong laser pulses
• Enhanced subthreshold electron-positron production in short laser pulses
• Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in a tightly focused laser beam
• Trident pair production in a constant crossed field
• Pair creation in collision of $\gamma$--ray beams produced with high intensity lasers
• Trident pair production in plane waves: Coherence, exchange, and spacetime inhomogeneity
• Dynamics of Relaxed Inflation
• Breit-Wheeler process in very short electromagnetic pulses
• Strong field QED in lepton colliders and electron/laser interactions
• Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair creation with bremsstrahlung $\gamma$ rays
• Analytical tools for investigating strong-field QED processes in tightly focused laser fields
• Strong-Field Breit-Wheeler Pair Production in Short Laser Pulses: Identifying Multiphoton Interference and Carrier-Envelope-Phase Effects
• Pair creation by collision of intense laser pulse with high-frequency photon beam
• Quantum processes in short and intensive electromagnetic fields
• Pair production by Schwinger and Breit-Wheeler processes in bi-frequent fields
• Photo-induced pair production and strong field QED on Gemini

Cited by in corpus (32)

• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Conceptual Design Report for the LUXE Experiment
• A uniform locally constant field approximation for photon-seeded pair production
• Letter of Intent for the LUXE Experiment
• Single Particle Detection System for Strong-Field QED Experiments
• Higher fidelity simulations of nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair creation in intense laser pulses
• Simulations of laser-driven strong-field QED with Ptarmigan: Resolving wavelength-scale interference and $\gamma$-ray polarization
• The trident process in laser pulses
• Linear Breit-Wheeler pair production by high-energy bremsstrahlung photons colliding with an intense X-ray laser pulse
• Pulse envelope effects in nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair-creation
• Numerical approach to the semiclassical method of pair production for arbitrary spins and photon polarization
• Nonlinear trident in the high-energy limit: Nonlocality, Coulomb field and resummations
• Toward the observation of interference effects in nonlinear Compton scattering
• Non-linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in collisions of bremsstrahlung $\gamma -$quanta and a tightly focussed laser pulse
• Laser pulse-length effects in trident pair production
• Multi-photon regime of non-linear Breit-Wheeler and Compton processes in short linearly and circularly polarized laser pulses
• Particle physics applications of the AWAKE acceleration scheme
• Are we ready to transfer optical light to gamma-rays?
• Impact of laser polarization on q-exponential photon tails in non-linear Compton scattering
• Non-perturbative signatures of non-linear Compton scattering
• Strong-field Breit-Wheeler pair production with bremsstrahlung gamma-rays in the perturbative-to-nonperturbative transition regime
• Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production using polarized photons from inverse Compton scattering
• Generation of quasi-monoenergetic positron beams in chirped laser fields
• Strong-field Breit-Wheeler pair production in ${\mathrm{QED}}_{2+1}$
• Positron energy distribution in factorized trident process
• Experimental characterisation of a single-shot spectrometer for high-flux, GeV-scale gamma-ray beams
• One-loop Schwinger effect in the presence of Lorentz-violating background fields
• Primer of Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics for Experimentalists
• Multi-photon enhancement of the Schwinger pair production mechanism under strong FEL radiation
• Monte Carlo challenges for strong field quantum electrodynamics
• Precision laser diagnostics for LUXE
• Collision parameters needed to measure polarisation-dependent nonlinear pair creation