Prestigious ERC Synergy Grant for Quantum Universe researchers

6 November 2025

Photo: Andreas Maier

The NP-QED team: (from left) Andreas Maier and Jenny List from DESY, Henri Vincenti from CEA, and Antonino Di Piazza from the University of Rochester

DESY scientists and Quantum Universe Key Researchers Jenny List and Andreas Maier, together with Henri Vincenti from the French research organization CEA and Antonino Di Piazza from the University of Rochester in the USA, have been awarded one of the highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grants. This grant is among the most prestigious offered in the European Union, recognizing outstanding scientific excellence and unique collaboration. The project NP-QED will be funded with nearly 14 million euro over six years, 5.3 million of which will be granted to the DESY scientists.

The project team of NP-QED (Probing the Non-Perturbative regime of Quantum Electrodynamics with extreme light) will investigate the quantum fundamentals of the electromagnetic force, one of the universe’s four basic forces, by generating extremely high electric fields using plasma accelerators and high-powered lasers.

The idea in the NP-QED proposal is to use a plasma particle accelerator and a high-intensity laser to produce conditions close to the Schwinger limit, a physical limit wherein the constituents of the vacuum begin to separate. Under the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), in a vacuum, particles and antiparticles constantly emerge and annihilate each other spontaneously and near instantaneously – so quickly it is so far not possible to observe.

“This is what we call ‘boiling the vacuum’ – where we split the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum producing real matter and antimatter particles out of the vacuum,” says Jenny List, an expert in next-generation particle detectors. “In the presence of such a strong field, you can produce the particle–antiparticle pairs in a way that they won’t annihilate and disappear.”

“One of the ideas here as well is to benchmark how this is becoming a more and more mature technology. This setup could make such experiments accessible not just at an institute like DESY as a large national lab, but also for universities and mid-size research facilities”, adds Maier, a lead scientist at DESY and key researcher of the Cluster. Maier also heads up the effort to produce miniature plasma accelerators to complement more classic, larger radiofrequency accelerators.

The research team will use the funding over the next 72 months to create new doctoral and postdoctoral positions and develop new instrumentation. Jenny List and Andreas Maier will create a research setup including a new detector, the plasma accelerator, and a high-power laser. Henri Vincenti from CEA will contribute a booster technique applicable to the colliding laser pulse, and theorist Antonio Di Piazza from the University of Rochester will develop new models to help explain results of the experiments and compare them to what is expected from QED as it is so far understood. Furthermore, the team will involve researchers at the high-power laser facility ELI-NP in Bucharest, Romania, and the Weizmann Institute in Israel.

“The idea of combining relativistic plasma mirrors with the advanced laser–plasma accelerators we have been developing at DESY emerged from a stimulating discussion I had with Henri, following a presentation on his groundbreaking work on relativistic plasma mirrors,” says DESY Director for Accelerators Wim Leemans. “Thanks to a stellar team, a truly exciting proposal has taken shape—one that will push into ‘terra-incognita’ in non-linear QED.”

“Particle physics at DESY is at the cutting edge – that is the message of this prestigious grant for NP-QED,” says DESY Director for Particle Physics Ulrich Husemann. “This institute supports world-class scientists who can help give shape to far-reaching ideas about the particle physics facilities of the future, while trying to answer fundamental physics questions along the way.”