Barrier suppression ionization in the ultra-high intensity laser-QED regime

There has been tremendous progress towards the construction and envisioned use of multi-petawatt classlaser facilities across the globe. The CPA mechanism allows such extreme powers to be achieved at the ELI pillars in Europe, currently being commissioned. Multi-PW lasers will be built in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, South Korea. China is on its way to build a 100-PW facility and a sub-exawatt facility is currently designed for the Russian Federation. Such facilities will lead to focused laser intensities higher than 10^23 W/cm2 becoming available in the near future.

Such high values of the focused intensity open up new regimes of laser-matter interactions, inaccessible up until now. For example, physicists will undertake experiments to determine which theoretical model for radiation reaction applies to the laser-plasma interaction. It will be possible to initiate QED cascades or generate prolific pair production in gamma-gamma or electron-gamma collisions. The condition needed to achieve these experimental milestones is that the focused intensity needs to be ultra-high.