Possibility of measuring photon-photon scattering via relativistic mirrors

Koga, J. K.; Bulanov, S. V.; Esirkepov, T. Z.; Pirozhkov, A. S.; Kando, Masaki; Rosanov, N. N.*

Photon-photon scattering predicted by quantum electrodynamics has not been experimentally confirmed in the optical frequency range. This is due to its extremely small cross section in this energy range. Since the cross section rapidly increases with photon energy, we propose measuring the photon-photon scattering cross section by upshifting optical lasers to the 100 eV to keV range using four relativistic mirror schemes and colliding them. In two of the schemes we find that although the number of scattering events is small with realistic laser parameters, measurement could be possible with an accumulation of a large number of laser shots. In the two other schemes a large number of scattering events is possible, however, the use of large future laser systems will be necessary.