  The LUXE experiment (LASER Und XFEL Experiment) is a new experiment in
planning at DESY Hamburg using the electron beam of the European XFEL. LUXE is
intended to study collisions between a high-intensity optical laser and 16.5
GeV electrons from the XFEL electron beam, as well as collisions between the
optical LASER and high-energy secondary photons. The physics objective of LUXE
are processes of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) at the strong-field frontier,
where the electromagnetic field of the laser is above the Schwinger limit. In
this regime, QED is non-perturbative. This manifests itself in the creation of
physical electron-positron pairs from the QED vacuum, similar to Hawking
radiation from black holes. LUXE intends to measure the positron production
rate in an unprecedented LASER intensity regime. An overview of the LUXE
experimental setup and its challenges will be given, followed by a discussion
of the expected physics reach in the context of testing QED in the
non-perturbative regime.
