Observation of quantum effects on radiation reaction in strong fields
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Los, Eva E
Mangles, Stuart
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Radiation reaction, the force experienced by an accelerated charge due to radiation emission, has long been the subject of extensive theoretical and experimental research. Experimental verification of a quantum, strong-field description of radiation reaction is fundamentally important, and has wide-ranging implications for astrophysics, laser-driven particle acceleration, next-generation particle colliders and inverse-Compton photon sources for medical and industrial applications. However, the difficulty of accessing regimes where strong field and quantum
effects dominate inhibited previous efforts to observe quantum radiation reaction in charged particle dynamics with high significance. We report the first high significance (> 5σ) observation of strong-field radiation
reaction on electron spectra where quantum effects are substantial. We obtain the first, quantitative, strong evidence favouring the quantum-continuous and
quantum-stochastic models over the classical model; the quantum models perform comparably. The lower electron energy losses predicted by the quantum models accounts for their improved performance. Model comparison was performed using a novel Bayesian framework which has widespread utility for laser-particle collision experiments, including those utilising conventional accelerators, where some collision parameters cannot be measured directly.
effects dominate inhibited previous efforts to observe quantum radiation reaction in charged particle dynamics with high significance. We report the first high significance (> 5σ) observation of strong-field radiation
reaction on electron spectra where quantum effects are substantial. We obtain the first, quantitative, strong evidence favouring the quantum-continuous and
quantum-stochastic models over the classical model; the quantum models perform comparably. The lower electron energy losses predicted by the quantum models accounts for their improved performance. Model comparison was performed using a novel Bayesian framework which has widespread utility for laser-particle collision experiments, including those utilising conventional accelerators, where some collision parameters cannot be measured directly.
Date Issued
2026-01-30
Date Acceptance
2025-12-11
Citation
Nature Communications, 2026, 17
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
17
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2026. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
10.1038/s41467-025-67918-8
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
1157
Date Publish Online
2026-01-13