Multiple Colliding Electromagnetic Pulses: A Way to Lower the Threshold ofe+e−Pair Production from Vacuum

Abstract

The scheme of a simultaneous multiple pulse focusing on one spot naturally arises from the structural features of projected new laser systems, such as the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) and High Power laser Energy Research (HiPER). It is shown that the multiple pulse configuration is beneficial for observing e+ e- pair production from a vacuum under the action of sufficiently strong electromagnetic fields. The field of focused pulses is described using a realistic three-dimensional model based on an exact solution of the Maxwell equations. The e+ e- pair production threshold in terms of electromagnetic field energy can be substantially lowered if, instead of one or even two colliding pulses, multiple pulses are focused on one spot. The multiple pulse interaction geometry gives rise to subwavelength field features in the focal region. These features result in the production of extremely short e+ e- bunches.

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

“…As is well known, the multiple colliding laser pulse concept (Bulanov et al 2010b) is beneficial for achieving an extremely high amplitude of coherent electromagnetic field (see also Bulanov et al 2010a;Gonoskov et al 2012Gonoskov et al , 2013Gelfer et al 2015). The complexity of the topology of the time-dependent EM field of colliding laser pulses results in the high complexity of the trajectories of charged particles available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.…”

“…This provides great simplification of the theoretical description. In addition, as has been noted above, in a standing wave formed by two colliding laser pulses, the resulting electromagnetic (EM) field configuration facilitates QED effects (see Bulanov et al 2004aBulanov et al , 2006Bulanov et al , 2010b. Computer simulations presented in Gonoskov et al (2016), Gong et al (2017), Vranic et al (2017) show that the MCLP concept can be beneficial for realizing such important laser-matter interaction regimes as, for example, the electron-positron pair production via the Breit-Wheeler process (see Vranic et al 2017) and the high efficiency γ -ray flash generation due Charged particle dynamics in colliding electromagnetic waves 3 to nonlinear Thomson or multi-photon Compton scattering, as shown in Gonoskov et al (2016), Gong et al (2017).…”

“…for a ten wave period duration, the laser pulse energy is approximately 300 J. Within the framework of the multiple colliding laser pulses (MCLP) concept formulated in Bulanov et al (2010b) (see Bulanov et al (2010a), Gonoskov et al (2012Gonoskov et al ( , 2013, Gelfer et al (2015) for development of this idea), the laser radiation with given energy E las is subdivided into several beams each of them having 1/N of the laser energy, where N is the number of beams. If the beams interfere in the focus in a constructive way, i.e.…”

Numerical investigation and potential tunability scheme on and stimulated pair creation from vacuum using high intensity laser beams

“…Finally in Refs. [22,25,26] the collision of multiple electromagnetic pulses is proposed as yet an another possible experimental scheme, where lower threshold is required for pair observation. In the ultra-relativistic regime ξ 1 (ξ = 1/γ ) recollision process of an electron-positron pair produced by the interaction of a high energy photon with an intense laser pulse allows relevant high energy physics effects [27] .…”

Analytical solution for the Klein-Gordon equation and action function of the solution for the Dirac equation in counterpropagating laser waves

“…The colliding wave configuration can provide higher field intensity and the electron classical trajectory is distinctly different compared to that in the plane-wave field. Extensive studies suggest that this kind of laser field is efficient in producing electron-positron pairs and supporting avalanche pair production, and thus is ideal for vacuum cascade observation [16][17][18][19][20]. Without analytical Volkov solution of Dirac equation in this field, the pair production rate has been calculated under the important quasi-stationarity approximation [19]: the reaction rate for each pair production is calculated with the value of the external field fixed at the given time, and finally these rates are timeaveraged over the total interaction time.…”