  LUXE (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.
