Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process in the collision of a photon with two plane waves

Abstract

The nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process of electron-positron pair production off a probe photon colliding with a low-frequency and a high-frequency electromagnetic wave that propagate in the same direction is analyzed. We calculate the pair-production probability and the spectra of the created pair in the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler processes of pair production off a probe photon colliding with two plane waves or one of these two plane waves. The differences of these two cases are discussed. We evidently show, in the two-wave case, the possibility of Breit-Wheeler pair production with simultaneous photon emission into the low-frequency wave and the high multiphoton phenomena: (i) Breit-Wheeler pair production by absorption of the probe photon and a large number of photons from the low-frequency wave, in addition to the absorption of one photon from the high-frequency wave; (ii) Breit-Wheeler pair production by absorption of the probe photon and one photon from the high-frequency wave with simultaneous emission of a large number of photons into the low-frequency wave. The phenomenon of photon emission into the wave cannot happen in the one-wave case. Compared with the one-wave case, the contributions from high multiphoton processes are largely enhanced in the two-wave case. The results presented in this article show a possible way to access the observations of the phenomenon of photon emission into the wave and high multiphoton phenomenon in Breit-Wheeler pair production even with the laser-beam intensity of order $10^{18}W/c{\mathrm{m}}^2$.

9 pages, 4 figures; typos corrected; matches version published in PRD

References in corpus (6)

• Dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism
• Finite size effects in stimulated laser pair production
• Barrier control in tunneling e^+ e^- photoproduction
• Effective mass signatures in multiphoton pair production
• Strongly enhanced pair production in combined high- and low-frequency laser fields
• Strong laser fields as a probe for fundamental physics

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Electron-positron pair production in a bifrequent oscillating electric field
• Strong-Field Breit-Wheeler Pair Production in Short Laser Pulses: Identifying Multiphoton Interference and Carrier-Envelope-Phase Effects
• Higher fidelity simulations of nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair creation in intense laser pulses
• Pulse envelope effects in nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair-creation
• Spectral caustics in laser assisted Breit-Wheeler process
• Pair production by Schwinger and Breit-Wheeler processes in bi-frequent fields