Limitations on the Attainable Intensity of High Power Lasers

Abstract

It is shown that even a single e- e+ pair created by a superstrong laser field in vacuum would cause development of an avalanchelike QED cascade which rapidly depletes the incoming laser pulse. This confirms Bohr's old conjecture that the electric field of the critical QED strength E(S) = m2c3/eℏ could never be created.