QED and Lasers: A Tutorial

Abstract

This is a write-up of a short tutorial talk on high-intensity QED, videopresented at the 2021 annual Christmas meeting of the Central Laser Facility at Rutherford-Appleton Lab, UK. The first half consists of a largely historical introduction to (quantum) electrodynamics focussing on a few key concepts. This well-established theory is then compared to its strong-field generalisation when a high-intensity laser is present. Some supplementary material and a fair amount of references have been added.

Classical Scattering of High-Energy Electrons off Ultra-Intense Laser Beams Taking into Account Radiation Reaction

“…A proper theory for such photonphoton collisions (this is why we insist on a tight focus and not in a quasi-plane wave) was developed by Breit and Wheeler [4], and extended later on by Reiss [5]. There are a lot of papers and excellent reviews that consider this scenario and the best path to arrive at it; see for example [6][7][8]. However, this limit is not likely to be achieved in the laboratory frame over the coming years or decades.…”