Speaker
Description
The E-320 experiment at SLAC FACET-II aims to investigate Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) in the strong-field regime.
By colliding 10 GeV, high-quality electron beams with 10 TW NIR laser pulses it is aspired to probe the QED critical (Schwinger) intensity of 10E29 Wcm-2 in the electron rest frame.
In this regime, characterized by X = E/Ecr>1, quantum corrections to classical synchrotron radiation become important and the probability for electron-positron pair production is no longer exponentially suppressed.
A central objective of E-320 is to observe the transition from the perturbative (a0^2<<1) to the non-perturbative regime (a0^2>>1), characterized by the intensity parameter a0, while quantum effects are important (i.e., X ~ 1 ).
Here, qualitative changes are expected to be observed, such as e.g. a substantial red shift of the Compton edges in the electron or photon spectrum and eventually a transition to a quasi-continuous spectrum. We will report on recent progress and results in the E-320 research program as well as future plans and development efforts.
