Radiative trapping in intense laser beams

Abstract

The dynamics of electrons in counter-propagating, circularly polarized laser beams are shown to exhibit attractors whose ability to trap particles depends on the ratio of the beam intensities and a single parameter describing radiation reaction. Analytical expressions are found for the underlying limit cycles and the parameter range in which they are stable. In high-intensity optical pulses, where radiation reaction strongly modifies the trajectories, the production of collimated gamma-rays and the initiation of non-linear cascades of electron-positron pairs can be optimized by a suitable choice of the intensity ratio.

Minor revision in response to referee report

References in corpus (4)

• Prolific pair production with high-power lasers
• Radiation Reaction Effects on Radiation Pressure Acceleration
• Quantum radiation reaction in laser-electron beam collisions
• Electron dynamics, gamma and electron-positron production by colliding laser pulses

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