Relativistic high-power laser–matter interactions
Yousef I. Salamin · S.X. Hu · Karen Z. Hatsagortsyan · Christoph H. Keitel
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source
In one page
Yousef Salamin, S. X. Hu, Karen Hatsagortsyan and Christoph Keitel wrote this review for Physics Reports in 2006, and it is the field’s map of what happens when light is made strong enough to matter. By then lasers had reached about 10²² watts per square centimetre. Above roughly 10¹⁸ watts per square centimetre — what the authors call the relativistic threshold — an electron caught in the beam is shaken so hard inside a single cycle that it moves at nearly the speed of light, and ordinary optics stops applying. The authors survey what that regime buys you: electrons accelerated to a few hundred million electron volts, high harmonic generation, laser-induced pair production in which the field pulls matter out of empty space, and nuclear reactions driven in plasmas and in highly charged ions. It is the experimental doorway between laser engineering and the structure of the vacuum itself, and it is where this site’s plasma chapter and its vacuum chapter meet working hardware.
Why it matters hereChapter 9 is about plasmas and plasmoids driven far from equilibrium, and this is the review that sets out the intensity scale at which a laboratory plasma stops being ordinary matter and becomes a relativistic system; chapter 2 is the vacuum, and pair production and quantum-electrodynamical effects at these intensities are the point where a beam of light starts pulling on the vacuum itself.
What it claims
01By 2006 laser technology had pushed the frontier of maximum intensity achieved to about 10²² watts per square centimetre, and the authors record that investigators expected still higher intensities in the near future.Abstract, sentence 1
Settled physics02The relativistic threshold is about 10¹⁸ watts per square centimetre. Above it the quantum phenomena the review is written to cover begin, and the review deliberately stresses those phenomena rather than the lower-intensity regime.Abstract, sentence 4
Settled physics03It is now possible to laser-accelerate electrons to a few hundred million electron volts — an accelerator result obtained from a table-top light source rather than a kilometre of beamline.Abstract, sentence 3
Published and peer-reviewed04Laser-induced pair production has made significant experimental progress: at these field strengths the beam creates particle pairs, which is matter appearing where the field acts on empty space.Abstract, sentence 3
Published and peer-reviewed05Nuclear physics experiments driven by high-power lasers have also made significant progress, and nuclear interactions in plasmas and in highly charged ions are among the topics the review covers alongside electron acceleration, atomic quantum dynamics, high harmonic generation and quantum electrodynamical effects.Abstract, sentences 3 and 6
Published and peer-reviewed06What to watch: the review is built on the expectation that intensity keeps climbing, because the interesting quantum electrodynamical effects are threshold effects. The measurement to follow is each new facility’s peak focused intensity and what appears in the interaction chamber when it passes the previous record — the same ladder that leads toward the field at which the vacuum breaks down into pairs on its own.Abstract, sentences 1 and 2; review scope, Physics Reports 427, 41–155
What to watch
Read it · abstract
Abstract
Recent advances in laser technology have pushed the frontier of maximum intensity achieved to about 10²² W/cm² and investigators currently believe even higher intensities may be reached in the near future. This, combined with other breakthroughs on the fronts of short pulse generation and high repetition rates, have stimulated considerable progress, theoretical as well as experimental, in the field of laser–matter interactions. It is now possible to laser-accelerate electrons to a few hundred MeV and laser-induced pair-production and nuclear physics experiments have made significant progress. This article is devoted to a review of the recent advances in the field and stresses quantum phenomena that require laser field intensities in excess of the relativistic threshold of ∼10¹⁸ W/cm². Interactions with free electrons, with highly-charged ions and with atoms and clusters, are reviewed. Electron laser acceleration, atomic quantum dynamics, high harmonic generation, quantum electrodynamical effects and nuclear interactions in plasmas and ions, are among the important topics covered in the article.
Yousef I. Salamin, S. X. Hu, Karen Z. Hatsagortsyan and Christoph H. Keitel, Relativistic high-power laser–matter interactions, Physics Reports 427, 41–155 (2006). The published review is at doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2006.01.002.
(Abstract only — no other text of the review is reproduced here; see the rights note above. On this site, the successor review from the same Heidelberg group, Di Piazza, Müller, Hatsagortsyan and Keitel on extremely high-intensity laser interactions with fundamental quantum systems, is at /library/stm-3b9cee0ab4; the current state of strong-field quantum electrodynamics is at /library/stm-2782ad4063; the companion review running from attosecond pulse generation to fast ignition is at /library/stm-3a51ad6c6a; and the two-beam Volkov solution applied to fusion conditions is at /library/stm-6a63866642.)
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2006.01.002SOURCE NOT REACHED IN FULL. This is a 115-page Physics Reports review, volume 427, pages 41 to 155, and Elsevier holds it closed: Unpaywall and OpenAlex both report no open version, and OpenAIRE lists no green copy. An arXiv API search by title, run over https with a working positive control, returned no preprint of this review, so no full text is reproduced here. THE ABSTRACT below is the authors’ own, as deposited by Elsevier and carried by OpenAIRE. Crossref returns an empty abstract for this DOI. The Max Planck PuRe record for the same paper, item 915853, is metadata only with no attached file, and its stored abstract has both intensity figures deleted where the equations sat, so the OpenAIRE copy is used instead. ONE REPAIR was made to that copy and nothing else: the deposit renders the two intensities as loose digit runs where superscripts were lost in the markup, and they are restored here as 10²² watts per square centimetre and 10¹⁸ watts per square centimetre, which is what the review states. Every locator points to a sentence of that abstract or to the bibliographic record.
How to cite it
Yousef I. Salamin, S.X. Hu, Karen Z. Hatsagortsyan, Christoph H. Keitel (2006) Relativistic high-power laser–matter interactions. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2006.01.002
Where it sits in the curriculum
Fusion machines: pinches, focus devices and inertial driversScalar waves and the field behind the fields