Historical research guide · 1048 · 2006
Relativistic high-power laser–matter interactions
Yousef I. Salamin · S.X. Hu · Karen Z. Hatsagortsyan · Christoph H. Keitel
In one minute
Yousef Salamin, S. X. Hu, Karen Hatsagortsyan and Christoph Keitel wrote this review for Physics Reports in 2006, and it is the field’s map of what happens when light is made strong enough to matter. By then lasers had reached about 10²² watts per square centimetre. Above roughly 10¹⁸ watts per square centimetre — what the authors call the relativistic threshold — an electron caught in the beam is shaken so hard inside a single cycle that it moves at nearly the speed of light, and ordinary optics stops applying. The authors survey what that regime buys you: electrons accelerated to a few hundred million electron volts, high harmonic generation, laser-induced pair production in which the field pulls matter out of empty space, and nuclear reactions driven in plasmas and in highly charged ions. It is the experimental doorway between laser engineering and the structure of the vacuum itself, and it is where this site’s plasma chapter and its vacuum chapter meet working hardware.
Connection
Chapter 9 is about plasmas and plasmoids driven far from equilibrium, and this is the review that sets out the intensity scale at which a laboratory plasma stops being ordinary matter and becomes a relativistic system; chapter 2 is the vacuum, and pair production and quantum-electrodynamical effects at these intensities are the point where a beam of light starts pulling on the vacuum itself.
From the source
By 2006 laser technology had pushed the frontier of maximum intensity achieved to about 10²² watts per square centimetre, and the authors record that investigators expected still higher intensities in the near future.Abstract, sentence 1
The relativistic threshold is about 10¹⁸ watts per square centimetre. Above it the quantum phenomena the review is written to cover begin, and the review deliberately stresses those phenomena rather than the lower-intensity regime.Abstract, sentence 4
It is now possible to laser-accelerate electrons to a few hundred million electron volts — an accelerator result obtained from a table-top light source rather than a kilometre of beamline.Abstract, sentence 3
Laser-induced pair production has made significant experimental progress: at these field strengths the beam creates particle pairs, which is matter appearing where the field acts on empty space.Abstract, sentence 3
Nuclear physics experiments driven by high-power lasers have also made significant progress, and nuclear interactions in plasmas and in highly charged ions are among the topics the review covers alongside electron acceleration, atomic quantum dynamics, high harmonic generation and quantum electrodynamical effects.Abstract, sentences 3 and 6
What to watch: the review is built on the expectation that intensity keeps climbing, because the interesting quantum electrodynamical effects are threshold effects. The measurement to follow is each new facility’s peak focused intensity and what appears in the interaction chamber when it passes the previous record — the same ladder that leads toward the field at which the vacuum breaks down into pairs on its own.Abstract, sentences 1 and 2; review scope, Physics Reports 427, 41–155
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2006.01.002How to cite it
Yousef I. Salamin, S.X. Hu, Karen Z. Hatsagortsyan, Christoph H. Keitel (2006) Relativistic high-power laser–matter interactions doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2006.01.002