Study of structures of vacuum by using combinations of high intensity lasers

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19H01907
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 15020:Experimental studies related to particle-, nuclear-, cosmic ray and astro-physics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Namba Toshio 東京大学, 素粒子物理国際研究センター, 助教 (40376702)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 素粒子実験 / 真空 / レーザー / X 線自由電子レーザー

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Various fields underlying in vacuum are searched by this research with two methods.
One method is a search for vacuum diffraction caused by a high intensity laser field. This search has been performed with a 0.6TW fs laser at SACLA XFEL beamline. Unfortunately, no vacuum diffraction signals are observed, but we have obtained the first upper limit for the vacuum diffraction.
Another method is a photon-photon collider. A beamline to collide XFEL + SXFEL at SACLA has been designed with mirrors. The event distributions of collided photons have been also calculated. Based on this calculation, a detector for the collider has been designed and constracted.

Free Research Field

素粒子物理学実験

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

一般的に真空は何も無い空間と考えられ、今まで学問の対象としてあまり見られてこなかった。一方で場の量子論は真空中にいろいろな場が満ちていることを予言する。この研究はそのような真空の見方を変え、空間のパラダイムを変えうる研究である。残念ながら本研究では新たな場の発見までは至らなかったが、将来の大強度実験による場の発見への道筋を示した。また、本研究で得た技術、特に X 線やレーザーの位置やタイミングを調整する手法は、他の光学実験にも幅広く応用することができる。