Extremely High-Intensity Laser Plasma PhysicsONLINE ONLY

Since the invention of chirped pulse amplification there has been a continuing increase in available laser intensity. Combined with advances in our understanding of the kinetics of relativistic plasma, studies of laser-plasma interactions  are entering a new regime where the physics of relativistic plasmas is strongly affected by strong-field quantum electrodynamics (QED) processes, including hard photon emission and electron-positron (e- - e+) pair production. This coupling of quantum emission processes and relativistic collective particle dynamics can result in dramatically new plasma physics phenomena, such as the generation of dense e- - e+ pair plasma from near vacuum, complete laser energy absorption by QED processes or the stopping of an ultrarelativistic electron beam, which could penetrate a cm of lead, by a hair's breadth of laser light. In addition to being of fundamental interest, it is crucial to study this new regime to understand the next generation of ultra-high intensity laser-matter experiments and their resulting applications, such as high energy ion, electron, positron, and photon sources. In this talk I will give an overview of the relevant strong-field QED processes, and discuss in detail several aspects related to the spin and polarisation properties of the involved particles.