Light-front approach to relativistic electrodynamics

We illustrate how our recent light-front approach simplifies relativistic electrody-namics with an electromagnetic (EM) field F ^μν that is the sum of a (even very intense) plane travelling wave $F_t^{\mu \nu }(ct-z)$ and a static part $F_s^{\mu \nu }(x,y,z)$; it adopts the light-like coordinate ξ = ct – z instead of time t as an independent variable. This can be applied to several cases of extreme acceleration, both in vacuum and in a cold diluted pasma hit by a very short and intense laser pulse (slingshot effect, plasma wave-breaking and lasera wake-field cceleration, etc.) (paper)