Measuring Vacuum Polarisation with High Power Lasers

Understand

When exposed to intense electromagnetic fields, the quantum vacuum is expected to exhibit properties of a polarisable medium akin to a weakly nonlinear dielectric material.

• Various schemes have been proposed to measure such vacuum polarisation effects using a combination of high power lasers.
• Motivated by several planned experiments, we provide an overview of experimental signatures that have been suggested to confirm this prediction of quantum electrodynamics of real photon-photon scattering.