Electron-positron pair production in ultrastrong laser fields

Abstract

Electron–positron pair production due to the decay of vacuum in ultrastrong laser fields is an interesting topic which is revived recently because of the rapid development of current laser technology. The theoretical and numerical research progress of this challenging topic is reviewed. Many new findings are presented by different approaches such as the worldline instantons, the S-matrix theory, the kinetic method by solving the quantum Vlasov equation or/and the real-time Dirac–Heisenberg–Wigner formalism, the computational quantum field theory by solving the Dirac equation and so on. In particular, the effects of electric field polarizations on pair production are unveiled with different patterns of created momentum spectra. The effects of polarizations on the number density of created particles and the nonperturbative signatures of multiphoton process are also presented. The competitive interplay between the multiphoton process and nonperturbation process plays a key role in these new findings. These newly discovered phenomena are valuable to deepen the understanding of pair production in complex fields and even have an implication to the study of strong-field ionization. More recent studies on the pair production in complex fields as well as beyond laser fields are briefly presented in the view point of perspective future.

Enhancement of electron-positron pairs in combined potential wells with linear chirp frequency

“…Soon after that, it was confirmed in the laboratory by Anderson [2]. After pioneering researches of Sauter [3], Heisenberg and Euler [4], and Schwinger [5], several research methods were developed, such as proper time technique [6,7], Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation [8], worldline instanton technique [9,10], quantum kinetic method [11][12][13][14], and the computational quantum field theory [15][16][17].…”

Enhanced dynamically assisted pair production in spatial inhomogeneous electric fields with the frequency chirping

“…Due to the rapid development of these technology, the vacuum e + e − pair production under strong fields has became a hot research topic. So far, several methods have been developed to investigate pair production in external fields, such as the worldline instanton technique [15][16][17], quantum Vlasov equation solution method [18][19][20], computational quantum field theory [21][22][23], Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner (DHW) formalism [24][25][26][27][28][29], and so on.…”

Schwinger pair production in inhomogeneous electric fields with symmetrical frequency chirp

“…The momentum spectrum of the created pairs may provide detail about pair creation dynamics as well as the external field shape [14][15][16]. Many research focus on temporal electric fields through changing of one or more field parameters [12,13,[17][18][19][20][21], such as field frequency [20], carrier phase [21], and analyze effects of these arguments on the momentum spectrum of created particles.…”