Anomalous Radiative Trapping in Laser Fields of Extreme Intensity

Abstract

We demonstrate that charged particles in a sufficiently intense standing wave are compressed toward, and oscillate synchronously at, the antinodes of the electric field. We call this unusual behavior anomalous radiative trapping (ART). We show using dipole pulses, which offer a path to increased laser intensity, that ART opens up new possibilities for the generation of radiation and particle beams, both of which are high energy, directed, and collimated. ART also provides a mechanism for particle control in high-intensity quantum-electrodynamics experiments.

Charged particle dynamics in multiple colliding electromagnetic waves. Survey of random walk, Lévy flights, limit circles, attractors and structurally determinate patterns

“…The dashed line is the ponderomotive potential (3.4) versus the x coordinate. In contrast, particles with initial coordinates near the maximum of the ponderomotive potential are trapped there (similar behaviour was noted in Gonoskov et al (2014)). …”

“…Even in the simplest MCLP case, two counter-propagating plane waves, the particle behaviour in the standing wave is quite complicated. It demonstrates regular and chaotic motion, random walk, limit circles and strange attractors as is shown by Mendonca (1983), Bauer, Mulser & Steeb (1995), Sheng et al (2002), Lehmann & Spatschek (2012, 2016, Gonoskov et al (2014), Bashinov, Kim & Sergeev (2015), Bulanov et al (2015), Esirkepov et al (2015), Jirka et al (2016), Kirk (2016). As is well known, the standing wave configuration is widely used in classical electrodynamics and in QED theory.…”

“…EM field configuration An electron interaction with an EM field formed by two counter-propagating waves has been addressed a number of times in high field theory using classical quantum electrodynamics approaches because it provides one of the basic EM configurations where important properties of a radiating electron can be revealed (e.g. see above cited publications Mendonca 1983;Di Piazza et al 2012;Lehmann & Spatschek 2012, 2016Gonoskov et al 2013Gonoskov et al , 2014Bashinov et al 2015;Bulanov et al 2015;Chang et al 2015;Esirkepov et al 2015;Lobet et al 2015;Bashinov, Kumar & Kim 2016;Grismayer et al 2016;Jirka et al 2016;Kirk 2016). Here, we present the results of the analysis of electron motion in a standing EM wave in order to compare them below with the radiating electron behaviour in a more complicated EM configuration formed by three or four waves with various polarizations.…”

Prospects for studying vacuum polarisation using dipole and synchrotron radiation

“…In the first, we used a dipole pulse as the 'target'. The optimal focussing of dipole pulses yields high focal field strengths, which makes them ideal for studying pair creation (Gonoskov et al 2013) and intense-field dynamics (Gonoskov et al 2014). However the dipole pulse has a small (subwavelength) focal spot size, which can be disadvantageous for vacuum birefringence as the relevant observable there is sensitive to, essentially, the product of field strength and spot size.…”

“…In an 'e-dipole' pulse the electric field dominates over the magnetic field in the focus, and provides optimal conditions for pair production via the non-perturbative Sauter-Schwinger mechanism (Gonoskov et al 2013(Gonoskov et al , 2014. In an 'h-dipole' pulse, the magnetic field dominates and one might ask whether the optimal focussing amplifies the helicity-flip probability.…”