Laser-plasma interactions at the intensity frontier

Recent advances in laser development have allowed the available peak laser intensity to increase by six orders of magnitude over the last 25 years. During this time, such intensity increases have allowed access to novel regimes in which plasmas can be heated to millions of kelvin, electrons can become relativistic within a single cycle, and ion beams can be accelerated by teravolt per metre electric fields.
In the next decade or so, laser field strengths will be achieved such that radiation reaction and QED terms must be considered to accurately represent the equation of motion of electrons in the laser focus.
In this seminar, I will discuss some of the potential opportunities and challenges concerning this intensity frontier, including potential new hard x-ray sources which might be generated. The need for new theory and modelling of the interaction will be discussed. Current experimental results and future experiments will be presented to show how a glimpse at next generation lasers may be obtained through current laser-plasma and laser-electron interactions.