Plasmas in extreme electromagnetic fields

The recent developments in the generation of laser pulses with ultra-high power (presently petawatt and progressing) have opened up a new frontier in plasma research by making it possible to obtain and to study mesoscopic amounts of relativistic (ionized) matter in compact-size experiments in the laboratory. This will make it possible to investigate in a controlled environment the nonlinear dynamics of collective relativistic systems, to enter the Quantum Electrodynamics plasma regime, and to explore conditions that are of interest for high-energy astrophysics and beyond.