Self-trapping of electromagnetic beams in vacuum supported by QED nonlinear effects

At very high radiation field intensities in vacuum, Maxwell equations need to be modified to account for the QED photon-photon interaction. We show that such modified equations support nondiffracting spatial radiation solitons that propagate for very long distances without changing their shapes. These solitons, and the underlying self-focusing and instability effects, should be observable in the near future.