On the Schwinger limit attainability with extreme power lasers

Abstract

Circularly polarized colliding laser pulses can create abundant electron-positron pair plasma [A. R. Bell and J. G. Kirk, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 200403 (2008)], which scattering the incoming electromagnetic waves can prevent them from reaching the critical field of Quantum Electrodynamics causing vacuum breakdown and polarization. It is shown that the effects of radiation friction and the electron-positron avalanche development depend on the electromagnetic wave polarization. For circularly polarized colliding pulses, which force the electrons to move in circles, these effects dominate not only the particle motion but also the evolution of the pulses. While for linearly polarized pulses, where the electrons (positrons) oscillate along the electric field, these effects are not as strong. There is an apparent analogy of these cases with circular and linear electron accelerators with the corresponding constraining and reduced roles of synchrotron radiation losses.

4 pages

References in corpus (5)

• Nonlinear collective effects in photon-photon and photon-plasma interactions
• Prolific pair production with high-power lasers
• Pair production in counter-propagating laser beams
• The Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses
• Barrier control in tunneling e^+ e^- photoproduction

Cited by in corpus (7)

• QED cascades induced by circularly polarized laser fields
• Twisted electron in a strong laser wave
• Thermally-induced vacuum instability in a single plane wave
• Schwinger effect in inhomogeneous electric fields
• Phase space evolution of pairs created in strong electric fields
• On the frequency of oscillations in the pair plasma generated by a strong electric field
• Radiation reaction in strong fields from an alternative perspective