Laser technology has come a long way<\/a> since its invention a little over half a century ago<\/a>. Focussing petawatts of power in mere instants of time, they’re theorized to be capable of literally shaking matter<\/a> out of the very fabric of reality itself.<\/p>\n What we think of as empty space is \u2013 on a quantum level \u2013 an ocean of possibility. Fields representing all kinds of physical interactions hum with the promise of particles we’d recognize as the foundations of light and the building blocks of matter itself. These virtual particles<\/a> essentially pop into and out of existence in fractions of a second.<\/p>\n All it takes for them to manifest longer-term is the right kind of physical persuasion that discourages them from canceling one another out; the kind of persuasion a series of strong electromagnetic fields might provide when arranged in a suitable fashion, for example.<\/p>\n To determine whether predictions on the power of lasers could indeed generate something from nothing, Norreys and his team ran computational models based on the mathematics<\/a> underpinning electromagnetic fields in a vacuum.<\/p>\n Plugging numbers into their solver revealed that blending three suitably strong laser beams and their electromagnetic fields can generate a level of polarization that forces virtual photons to part before they blur out of existence. Known as four-wave mixing<\/a>, the scattered photons would appear as a fourth beam of light.<\/p>\n This kind of photon-photon scattering has long been predicted as possible, yet attempts to observe it in reality have so far proven ineffective.<\/p>\n “By applying our model to a three-beam scattering experiment, we were able to capture the full range of quantum signatures, along with detailed insights into the interaction region and key time scales,” says<\/a> the study’s lead author, physicist Zixin Zhang at Oxford.<\/p>\n While the findings are all numerical for now, they do provide a more physically realistic description of what to expect than previous models. We may not need to wait all that long for the results to be put to the ultimate test either.<\/p>\n The Extreme Light Infrastructure project<\/a> in Romania is currently home to the world’s most advanced high-power laser infrastructure, already achieving averages of around 10 petawatts in ultrashort bursts of light.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the EP-OPAL project<\/a> at the University of Rochester in the US has two 25-petawatt beams in the works, with photon-photon scattering experiments already being planned. The Shanghai High repetition rate X-ray Free Electron Laser and Extreme light facility<\/a> in China also hopes to smash records this year, aiming for 100 petawatts using its free-electron technology.<\/p>\n Using nothing but photons to generate the necessary electromagnetic fields, it’s hoped the light being scattered out of the darkness won’t be hidden in a fog of other particles, finally proving once and for all that it is possible in physics to squeeze something out of nothing.<\/p>\n![\"diagram](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/4wave_photon_scattering_642.jpg\")
A 2D interaction simulation of four light beams on a plane, with different colors representing different wavelengths combining and one beam being scattered out. (Zhang et al, Commun Phys, 2025)<\/p>\n