Lasers available in 2015 will tear apart the vacuum to create a new state of matter

LJ13498 - In this paper we have shown that next-generation lasers will tear apart the vacuum to generate a new state of matter: a quantum electrodynamic (QED)-plasma.  This will usher in a revolution in laser plasma physics leading to many exciting new applications from the generation of large quantities of antimatter, to the being the basis of the world's most intense gamma-ray source.  Quantum electrodynamics (QED) underpins our understanding of what happens when elementary particles such as electrons are accelerated to very high energies.  QED predicts that a strong electromagnetic field applied to the vacuum can be converted into mass, tearing the vacuum into electron-positron pairs.  We have shown that this will be possible by firing 10PW lasers (10PW = 10,000 times the electrical generating capacity of the US), due to be completed in 2015, at solid targets. When the laser strikes the solid the electrons are rapidly stripped away from their atoms, the solid is ionised and a dense plasma is created.  An entirely new state of matter is generated in the laser focus, defined by a complex interplay of the QED processes and classical plasma physics: a 'QED-plasma'.