quvac

Quvac (from quantum vacuum, pronounced as qu-ack 🐸) allows to calculate quantum vacuum signals produced during light-by-light scattering.

Documentation is available here.

Installation

It is recommended to create a separate Python environment for this package, e.g.

micromamba create -n quvac python=3.12

After cloning the git repository and entering it, choose relevant optional dependencies

• [test] allows to run tests
• [plot] installs matplotlib and jupyterlab
• [docs] installs sphinx and everything necessary for documentation generation
• [optimization] installs Bayesian optimization package
• [light] is a shorthand for [test,plot,docs]

To install all dependencies, run

pip install .[all]

After successfull installation with [all] or [test] option, run pytest to make sure the installation was successfull (it takes some time).

pytest

Using uv

If you prefer using uv package manager then the installation follows similar steps. After cloning the git repository and entering it, create the environment and install quvac

uv venv
uv pip install .[light]

You can test the installation with

uv run pytest

Launch the jupyterlab (e.g. tutorial notebooks) with

uv run jupyter lab

Generate the documentation with

uv run python -m sphinx -b html docs/source docs/build/html

Contribution

If you noticed a bug or have a feature request, open a new issue.

Acknowledgements

If you use this code and/or consider it useful, please cite our article.

@article{valialshchikov2025back,
  title={Back-reflection in dipole fields and beyond},
  author={Valialshchikov, Maksim and Karbstein, Felix and Seipt, Daniel and Zepf, Matt},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.11764},
  year={2025}
}

References

[1] - F. Karbstein, and R. Shaisultanov. "Stimulated photon emission from the vacuum." PRD 91.11 (2015): 113002 [article].

[2] - A. Blinne, et al. "All-optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearities in generic laser fields." PRD 99.1 (2019): 016006 [article].