Synchrotron radiation, pair production and longitudinal electron motion during 10-100PW laser solid interactions

Abstract

At laser intensities above 1023W/cm2 the interaction of a laser with a plasma is qualitatively different to the interactions at lower intensities. In this intensity regime solid targets start to become relativistically underdense, gamma-ray production by synchrotron emission starts to become an important feature of the dynamics and, at even higher intensities, electron-positron pair production by the non-linear Breit-Wheeler process starts to occur. Previous work in this intensity regime has considered ion acceleration1,2, identified different mechanisms for the underlying plasma physics of laser generation of gamma-rays3,4,5 considered the effect of target parameters on gamma-ray generation6 and considered the creation of solid density positronium plasma3. However a complete linked understanding of the important new physics of this regime is still lacking. In this paper, an analysis is presented of the effects of target density, laser intensity, target preplasma properties and other parameters on the conversion efficiency, spectrum and angular distribution of gamma-rays by synchrotron emission. An analysis of the importance of Breit-Wheeler pair production is also presented.

References in corpus (2)

• Prolific pair production with high-power lasers
• Modelling Gamma Ray Emission and Pair Production in High-Intensity Laser-Matter Interactions

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Highly-efficient source of collimated multi-MeV photons driven by radiation reaction of an electron beam in a self-generated magnetic field
• Implementing nonlinear Compton scattering beyond the local constant field approximation
• Semiclassical picture for electron-positron photoproduction in strong laser fields
• Matter creation via gamma-gamma collider driving by 10 PW laser pulses
• Production and dynamics of positrons in ultrahigh intensity laser-foil interactions
• Efficient ion acceleration and dense electron-positron plasma creation in ultra-high intensity laser-solid interactions
• Probing strong-field QED with Doppler-boosted PetaWatt-class lasers
• Laser-driven hole boring and gamma-ray emission in high-density plasmas
• Inverse Compton scattering from solid targets irradiated by ultra-short laser pulses in the $10^{22}-10^{23}W/c{\mathrm{m}}^2$ regime
• Onset of electron-seeded cascades in generic electromagnetic fields
• All-optical nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production with $\gamma$-flash photons
• Identifying the electron-positron cascade regimes in high-intensity laser-matter interactions
• Synchrotron radiation from ultrahigh-intensity laser-plasma interactions and competition with Bremsstrahlung in thin foil targets
• Synchrotron emission from nanowire-array targets irradiated by ultraintense laser pulses
• Incoherent synchrotron emission of laser-driven plasma edge
• Absorption and opacity threshold for a thin foil in a strong circularly polarized laser field
• Pauli blocking effects in thermalization of relativistic plasma