Virtual Laser Plasma Laboratory Research group of Prof. Dr. Alexander Pukhov

The recent possibility to explore fundamental and high-energy physics with high intensity lasers opens up an unprecedented frontier of contemporary physics. The European scientific community working on the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) has built over the past 5 years a compelling scientific case based on the original vision toward Exa- and Zettawatt lasers and their science scope, showing that the ultra intense field could be of the upmost relevance to fundamental physics and its applications. More recently the unification of the high intensity and high energy density demonstrated through the Intensity-Pulse Duration conjecture by G. Mourou and T. Tajima has unified the ultra high peak power in the exawatt-zettawatt and ultra short pulses in the yocto-zeptosecond regimes. Their work gives a new wind to large-scale laser infrastructure missions and reaffirms their potential relevance to fundamental physics.

The VLPL code features QED physics such as gamma ray emission in strong laser-plasma fields and electron-positron pair generation. As the laser intensity increases, these two channels may become dominant in the laser energy absorption.