Laser-driven plasma pinching in e−e+ cascade

Abstract

The cascaded production and dynamics of electron-positron plasma in ultimately focused laser fields of extreme intensity are studied by 3D particle-in-cell simulations with the account for the relevant processes of quantum electrodynamics (QED). We show that, if the laser facility provides a total power above 20 PW, it is possible to trigger not only a QED cascade but also pinching in the produced electron-positron plasma. The plasma self-compression in this case leads to an abrupt rise of the peak density and magnetic (electric) field up to at least 10 28 cm −3 and 1/20 (1/40) of the Schwinger field, respectively. Determining the actual limits and physics of this process might require quantum treatment beyond the used standard semiclassical approach. The proposed setup can thus provide extreme conditions for probing and exploring fundamental physics of the matter and vacuum.

Optimized Computation of Tight Focusing of Short Pulses Using Mapping to Periodic Space

“…Besides the use in simulations [26,27], numerical computations can also support experimental efforts to achieve high intensity, e.g., by controlling adaptive optics [28] or by retrieving information from the measured output based on the solution of inverse problem [29]. Numerical computations are also of clear interest for designing experiments [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39] at the next generation large-scale laser facilities [40], where strong electromagnetic fields are likely to be reached by the combination of several, tightly focused laser pulses [41,42].…”

Beamstrahlung-enhanced disruption in beam-beam interaction

“…[10,21]. In general, the interplay between radiation of hard-photons and pair production can lead to a very fast growth of the total number of particles -an effect known as QED cascade, which has recently drawn a lot of attention [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Such QED cascades can also develop in colliding beam scenarios.…”

Particle trajectories, gamma-ray emission, and anomalous radiative trapping effects in magnetic dipole wave

“…For such field structures detailed studies have also been done with respect to gamma-ray emission, QED cascades and electron-positron pair plasma production (see also [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]). Particularly, in the limiting case of a converging e-dipole wave [23], characterized by a minimal focal volume and the highest electric field, extreme plasma states can be created, paving the way to the quantum pair plasma and the Schwinger field [24,25]. However, there are also many fundamental effects in which the magnetic field is a key factor, for example, high energy electrons radiate gamma photons mainly on the curved part of their trajectories induced by * bashinov@ipfran.ru a strong magnetic field [26].…”

“…In this paper we pay attention to the case of tightly focused laser beams that maximize the magnetic field, and begin our consideration with the limiting case in the form of a converging m-dipole wave. We keep in mind such an important problem as vacuum breakdown in tightly focused laser beams and dense pair plasma production in the laboratory [9,14,16,19,24,25,[27][28][29][30][31]. In this problem both electric and magnetic fields are equally important.…”