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arXiv · 2403.06762

A dark-field setup for the measurement of light-by-light scattering with high-intensity lasers

Abstract

We put forward a concrete experimental setup allowing to measure light-by-light scattering in the collision of two optical high-intensity laser beams at state-of-the-art high-field facilities operating petawatt class laser systems. Our setup uses the same focusing optics for both laser beams to be collided and employs a dark-field approach for the detection of the single-photon-level nonlinear quantum vacuum response in the presence of a large background. Based on an advanced modeling of the colliding laser fields, we in particular provide reliable estimates for the prospective numbers of signal photons scattered into the dark-field for various laser polarizations.

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Fabian Schütze, Leonard Doyle, Jörg Schreiber, Matt Zepf, Felix Karbstein. 2024-04-16. A dark-field setup for the measurement of light-by-light scattering with high-intensity lasers. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.109.096009

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