Prospects for studying vacuum polarisation using dipole and synchrotron radiation

Abstract

The measurement of vacuum polarisation effects, in particular vacuum birefringence, using combined optical and x-ray laser pulses is now actively pursued. Here we briefly examine the feasibility of two alternative setups. The first utilises an alternative target, namely a converging dipole pulse, and the second uses an alternative probe, namely the synchrotron-like emission from highly energetic particles, themselves interacting with a laser pulse. The latter setup has been proposed for experiments at ELI-NP.

Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to the special issue "Ultra-high Field Physics With Lasers" of the Journal of Plasma Physics