13 research outputs found
A proposal for testing subcritical vacuum pair production with power lasers
We present a proposal for testing the prediction of non-equilibrium quantum
field theory below the Schwinger limit. The proposed experiments should be able
to detect a measurable number of gamma rays resulting from the annihilation of
pairs in the focal spot of two opposing high intensity laser beams. We discuss
the dependence of the expected number of gamma rays with the laser parameters
and compare with the estimated background level of gamma hits for realistic
laser conditions.Comment: 14 pages, 1 tabl