{
  "abstract": "We report on the experimental details of a dark-field search for light-by-light scattering signals performed at the High Energy Density (HED) instrument of the European XFEL (EuXFEL) in a pump-probe type experiment colliding the EuXFEL beam with the 300-TW-class near-infrared Relativistic Laser at XFEL (ReLaX) at a center-of-mass photon energy of $ω_\\star = 116\\,\\mathrm{eV}$. Especially in combination with polarization filtering, the dark-field concept allows the signal-to-background ratio to be significantly enhanced and both polarization channels to be recorded. This work elaborates on the experimental setup and the diagnostics used, from the per-shot spatiotemporal-overlap diagnostics, via the polarizing beam splitter, to the characterization of the residual background. Moreover, it provides details on the start-to-end simulations of the setup used for analysis. Accumulating 2751 pump-probe collisions, no excess above background is observed, and an upper limit on the light-by-light scattering cross section of $7\\times10^{4}$ times the QED prediction at a 95% confidence level is derived. This is the most stringent bound on low-energy light-by-light scattering achieved to date, representing an improvement by ten orders of magnitude upon previous experimental limits.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.39867",
  "author_total": 55,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Aimé Matheron"
    },
    {
      "name": "Michal Šmíd"
    },
    {
      "name": "Felix Karbstein"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sebastian Göde"
    },
    {
      "name": "Willi Hippler"
    },
    {
      "name": "Robert Lötzsch"
    },
    {
      "name": "Michal Andrzejewski"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sergey Antipov"
    },
    {
      "name": "Carsten Baehtz"
    },
    {
      "name": "Victorien Bouffetier"
    },
    {
      "name": "Erik Brambrink"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jakub Bulička"
    },
    {
      "name": "Samuele Di Dio Cafiso"
    },
    {
      "name": "Rafael Celestre"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jaromír Chalupský"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thomas E. Cowan"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jörg Grenzer"
    },
    {
      "name": "Travis Griffin"
    },
    {
      "name": "Věra Hájková"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jens Hauser"
    },
    {
      "name": "Peter Hilz"
    },
    {
      "name": "Hauke Höppner"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alžběta Horynová"
    },
    {
      "name": "Lingen Huang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Oliver Humphries"
    },
    {
      "name": "Šimon Jelínek"
    },
    {
      "name": "Libor Juha"
    },
    {
      "name": "Pooyan Khademi"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alejandro Laso-García"
    },
    {
      "name": "Masruri Masruri"
    },
    {
      "name": "Nikita Medvedev"
    },
    {
      "name": "Motoaki Nakatsutsumi"
    },
    {
      "name": "Gerhard G. Paulus"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jennifer Popp"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thomas R. Preston"
    },
    {
      "name": "Isabella Probst"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sripati V. Rahul"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thomas Roth"
    },
    {
      "name": "Felipe C. Salgado"
    },
    {
      "name": "Roland Sauerbrey"
    },
    {
      "name": "Alexander Sävert"
    },
    {
      "name": "Hans-Peter Schlenvoigt"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jan Patrick Schwinkendorf"
    },
    {
      "name": "Frank Seiboth"
    },
    {
      "name": "Georgiy Shoulga"
    },
    {
      "name": "Minxue Tang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Abha Thazhathe Peedika"
    },
    {
      "name": "Monika Toncian"
    },
    {
      "name": "Toma Toncian"
    },
    {
      "name": "Vojtěch Vozda"
    },
    {
      "name": "Edgar Weckert"
    },
    {
      "name": "Colin Wessel"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jan Wild"
    },
    {
      "name": "Ulf Zastrau"
    },
    {
      "name": "Matt Zepf"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/asbr4eg57qjqp.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.39867",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "asbr4eg57qjqp",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.39867",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "hep-ex"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.optics"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.39867",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-29",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/asbr4eg57qjqp.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:36:23Z",
      "native_id": "2610.39867",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.39867"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:hep-ex",
      "subfield": "high-energy"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.optics",
      "subfield": "optics-photonics"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Dark-field Search for Quantum Vacuum Signals in the Low-Energy Regime",
  "title_text": "Dark-field Search for Quantum Vacuum Signals in the Low-Energy Regime",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-01T12:20:45Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/asbr4eg57qjqp",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}