Abstract

An experiment is in preparation⁽¹⁾ at the 2-mile Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) to study the scattering of 50 GeV electrons from a focussed short pulse of IR (λ = 1054) with peak intensity 10¹⁹ to 10²⁰ W/cm². The electric field seen by the electron in its own rest frame is E^*= 2γE_LAB where γ is the ratio of the electron energy to its rest mass. For this experiment, where γ = 10⁵ and if I = 10¹⁹ W/cm², the ratio of E^* to the critical field E_c =m²c³/eħ = 1.32 × 10¹⁶ V/cm, reaches unity. At such field strengths multiphoton absorption is dominant and calculations must be carried out beyond simple perturbative QED.

© 1992 The Author(s)