
- Matter and Radiation at Extremes
- Vol. 4, Issue 6, 063002 (2019)
Abstract
With the continuous development of high power laser technologies, lasers with peak power at 10 petawatt (PW) or above are becoming available soon in a few laboratories worldwide. Such lasers may be focused to an intensity above 1023 W/cm2, at which heavy elements such as uranium can be stripped of electrons, entirely leaving behind pure atomic nuclei, and electrons can be accelerated to more than 10 GeV. We are entering an unprecedented regime of laser-matter interactions, where collective effects, relativistic effects, and quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects all play significant roles. Extremely rich nonlinear physics in this regime could be tested experimentally, such as radiation reaction, gamma-ray and pair production via different processes, laser driven nuclear physics, laser-vacuum polarization, etc. It is expected that the new understanding of physics for these extreme high field conditions will lead to a wide range of applications.
Even though very few experimental efforts have been made so far, significant theory and simulation studies have been carried out in this field. Here we are pleased to publish seven papers dedicated to this specific topic in Matter and Radiation at Extremes. In Ref.
Generally, research on this topic is highly cross-disciplinary, covering particularly laser plasma physics, nuclear physics, accelerator physics, quantum electron dynamics, and astrophysics. Exploration in this area is just at the beginning, and many interesting discoveries and applications are expected in the coming years when such high power lasers become available for experiments.
References

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