Technical Design Report for the LUXE experiment

This Technical Design Report presents a detailed description of all aspects of the LUXE (Laser Und XFEL Experiment), an experiment that will combine the high-quality and high-energy electron beam of the European XFEL with a high-intensity laser, to explore the uncharted terrain of strong-field quantum electrodynamics characterised by both high energy and high intensity, reaching the Schwinger field and beyond. The further implications for the search of physics beyond the Standard Model are also discussed

Technical Design Report for the LUXE experiment

This Technical Design Report presents a detailed description of all aspects of the LUXE (Laser Und XFEL Experiment), an experiment that will combine the high-quality and high-energy electron beam of the European XFEL with a high-intensity laser, to explore the uncharted terrain of strong-field quantum electrodynamics characterised by both high energy and high intensity, reaching the Schwinger field and beyond. The further implications for the search of physics beyond the Standard Model are also discussed

Detector challenges of the strong-field QED experiment LUXE at the European XFEL

The LUXE experiment aims at studying high-field QED in electron-laser and photon-laser interactions, with the 16.5 GeV electron beam of the European XFEL and a laser beam with power of up to 350 TW. The experiment will measure the spectra of electrons and photons in non-linear Compton scattering where production rates in excess of $10^9$ are expected per 1 Hz bunch crossing. At the same time positrons from pair creation in either the two-step trident process or the Breit-Wheeler process will be measured, where the expected rates range from $10^{-3}$ to $10^3$ per bunch crossing, depending on the laser power and focus. These measurements have to be performed in the presence of low-energy high radiation-background. To meet these challenges, for high-rate electron and photon fluxes, the experiment will use Cherenkov radiation detectors, scintillator screens, sapphire sensors as well as lead-glass monitors for backscattering off the beam-dump. A four-layer silicon-pixel tracker and a compact electromagnetic tungsten calorimeter with GaAs sensors will be used to measure the positron spectra. The layout of the experiment and the expected performance under the harsh radiation conditions will be presented

LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED in electron-LASER and photon-LASER collisions

The LUXE experiment (LASER Und XFEL Experiment) is a new experiment in planning at DESY Hamburg using the electron beam of the European XFEL. LUXE is intended to study collisions between a high-intensity optical laser and 16.5 GeV electrons from the XFEL electron beam, as well as collisions between the optical LASER and high-energy secondary photons. The physics objective of LUXE are processes of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) at the strong-field frontier, where the electromagnetic field of the laser is above the Schwinger limit. In this regime, QED is non-perturbative. This manifests itself in the creation of physical electron-positron pairs from the QED vacuum, similar to Hawking radiation from black holes. LUXE intends to measure the positron production rate in an unprecedented LASER intensity regime. An overview of the LUXE experimental setup and its challenges will be given, followed by a discussion of the expected physics reach in the context of testing QED in the non-perturbative regime

LUXE: a new experiment to study non-perturbative QED and search for new particles in electron-laser and photon-laser collisions

LUXE is a proposed near-future experiment along the European XFEL beamline aiming to make several new measurements in the non-perturbative regime of strong-field quantum electrodynamics (SFQED). The experiment will collide electrons and photons with a high-intensity laser in order to measure multiple non-linear processes unique to the extreme realm of SFQED, allowing the first chance to validate theoretical models in this unexplored regime. The photon-laser collisions in particular will be unique to LUXE, offering the most direct demonstration of electron-positron pair production from the QED vacuum at extreme field strengths. Additionally, the large quantities of photons reaching the final beam dump of the experiment will be utilized in a search for long-lived, axion-like particles which are candidates for dark matter. A variety of complimentary detector systems are used to ensure precise results and accurate calibration. The theoretical background and experimental program are briefly outlined, in order to give a broad view of the experimental goals

Probing ALPs at the LUXE experiment

The proposed LUXE experiment (LASER Und XFEL Experiment) at DESY, Hamburg, aims to probe QED in its non-perturbative regime. In order to do this, LUXE will study the interactions between 16.5 GeV electrons from the European XFEL and high-intensity laser pulses. This experiment also provides a unique opportunity to probe physics beyond the Standard Model: exploiting the large photon flux generated at LUXE, it is possible to design a dedicated detector to probe axion-like-particles up to a mass of 350 MeV and with photon coupling of $3 \cdot 10^{-6}$ GeV$^{-1}$. This reach is comparable to the projected sensitivity of experiments like FASER2 at the HL-LHC and NA62 operating in dump mode

LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED

Laser Und XFEL Experiment (LUXE), is a new High Energy and Laser Physics experiment planned to be installed in DESY. It will study the interactions of a very-intense Laser beam with the high-energy, high-quality electron beams from the European XFEL accelerator, to measure characteristics of non-perturbative quantum electrodynamics

Precision laser diagnostics for LUXE

Strong field QED is an active research frontier. The investigation of fundamental phenomena such as pair creation, photon-photon and photon-electron interactions in the nonlinear QED regime are a formidable challenge -- both experimentally and theoretically. Several experiments around the world are being planned or in preparation to probe this strong field regime. LUXE (Laser Und XFEL Experiment) is an experimental platform which envisages the collision of the high quality 16.5 GeV electron beam from the European XFEL accelerator with a 100 TW class high power laser. One of the unique features of LUXE is to measure the key observables such as pair rates ($e^+e^-$) with unprecedented accuracy in the characterization of both beams together with ample statistics. The state-of-art detector technologies for high energy particle and photon detection enable percent level precision. The state-of-art high power lasers offer high quality laser beams, however, the residual shot-to-shot fluctuations coupled with the large nonlinearity of the processes under investigation form a particular challenge. An uncertainty of 5 percent on the absolute laser intensity already leads to a very large ( about 40 percent) uncertainty in the pair rate. Hence it becomes essential to control the laser parameters precisely. To mitigate this issue a full suite of laser diagnostics is being currently developed at the JETI40 laser in Jena with the aim of tagging the shot intensity to less than 1 percent. In this presentation, details of the laser and the diagnostics suit for the single shot tagging of all the laser parameters will be presented. Moreover, results from an ongoing campaign to properly relay image the beam without significant distortion of the laser beam parameters for post-diagnosis will be discussed

STUDY OF QED IN STRONG FIELD REGIME AT LUXE EXPERIMENT

The LUXE experiment at DESY plans to use the European XFEL electron beam of 17.5 GeV in collision with a high intensity optical laser to study non-perturbative QED phenomena. The main focus of the experiment will be the measurement of the rate of laser assisted electron-positron pair production in collisions of high energy photons with an intensive laser beam and high intensity Compton scattering electron-laser interaction. The design of the experimental setup, detector-system requirements and simulation results are presented and discussed

LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED in e−e^{-}-laser and γ\gamma-laser collisions

The LUXE experiment (Laser Und XFEL Experiment) is a new experiment in planning at DESY Hamburg using the electron beam of the European XFEL. LUXE is intended to study collisions between a high-intensity optical laser and up to 16.5 GeV electrons from the Eu.XFEL electron beam, or, alternatively, high-energy secondary photons. The physics objective of LUXE are processes of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) at the strong-field frontier, where QED is non-perturbative. This manifests itself in the creation of physical electron-positron pairs from the QED vacuum. LUXE intends to measure the positron production rate in a new physics regime at an unprecedented laser intensity. Parasitically, the high-intensity Compton photon beam of LUXE can be used to search for physics beyond the Standard Model