Relativistic nonlinear electrodynamics. The QED vacuum and matter in super-strong radiation fields (Q896535)

The book is a new edition of a book published by the same author ten years ago under the title of ``Relativistic Nonlinear Electrodynamics''. As well as the earlier book, the current one is dealing with interactions of very strong coherent electromagnetic fields with charged particles, both in vacuum and in dielectric media. The writing of the new edition was stimulated by the rapid development of extremely powerful lasers in the course of the last ten years, which has made superstrong optical beams available to the experiments. The basic part of the book, which overlaps with its earlier published version, deals with the interaction of charged particles with very strong plane electromagnetic waves in vacuum, which is followed by detailed presentation of the theory for the interaction of charged particles with strong fields in dielectric materials. This analysis makes special emphasis on topics such as the Cherenkov emission; cyclotron resonance; induced Compton scattering; the dynamics of electromagnetically driven charged particles in undulators; induced channeling of particles in crystals; the theory of free-electron lasers; and, finally, production of electron-positron pairs by superstrong electromagnetic field in the quantum vacuum. Newly added chapters of the book address additional topics, such as the interaction of highly-charged ions with strong electromagnetic fields; the interaction of superstrong plasmas with plasmas; the theory of the dynamics of X-ray and gamma-ray lasers, whose advent is expected soon, to open novel perspectives in atomic, molecular, and other fields of physics. Finally, the interaction of strong electromagnetic fields with electrons in graphene is considered in the concluding chapter of the book. Particular chapters include both the introduction to the respective topics, and the presentation of a sophisticated theoretical analysis.