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Letter of Intent: Towards a Vacuum Birefringence Experiment at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields

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arxiv 2405.18063 v1 pith:XVHBX5XE submitted 2024-05-28 physics.ins-det hep-exhep-phphysics.optics

classification physics.ins-dethep-exhep-phphysics.optics
keywords vacuumquantumfieldslaserbeamlinebirefringencediscoveryexperiment
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Quantum field theory predicts a nonlinear response of the vacuum to strong electromagnetic fields of macroscopic extent. This fundamental tenet has remained experimentally challenging and is yet to be tested in the laboratory. A particularly distinct signature of the resulting optical activity of the quantum vacuum is vacuum birefringence. This offers an excellent opportunity for a precision test of nonlinear quantum electrodynamics in an uncharted parameter regime. Recently, the operation of the high-intensity laser ReLaX provided by the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) has been inaugurated at the High Energy Density (HED) scientific instrument of the European XFEL. We make the case that this worldwide unique combination of an x-ray free-electron laser and an ultra-intense near-infrared laser together with recent advances in high-precision x-ray polarimetry, refinements of prospective discovery scenarios, and progress in their accurate theoretical modelling have set the stage for performing an actual discovery experiment of quantum vacuum nonlinearity.

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  1. Back-reflection in dipole fields and beyond

    quant-ph 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Back-reflection in dipole fields is dominated by a four-wave-mixing channel; an optimized three-pulse planar setup gives ~1.5 discernible signal photons per shot with signal-to-background ~10^5.

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