Ionization-induced laser-driven QED cascade in noble gases

Abstract

A formula for the ionization rate in extremely intense electromagnetic field is proposed and used for numerical study of QED (quantum-electrodynamical) cascades in noble gases in the field of two counter-propagating laser pulses. It is shown that the number of the electron-positron pairs produced in the cascade increases with the atomic number of the gas where the gas density is taken to be reversely proportional to the atomic number. While the most electrons produced in the laser pulse front are expelled by the ponderomotive force from region occupied by the strong laser field there is a small portion of the electrons staying in the laser field for a long time until the instance when the laser field is strong enough for cascading. This mechanism is relevant for all gases. For high-$Z$ gases there is an additional mechanism associated with the ionization of inner shells at the the instance when the laser field is strong enough for cascading. The role of both mechanisms for cascade initiation is revealed.

References in corpus (10)

• Extremely high-intensity laser interactions with fundamental quantum systems
• Prolific pair production with high-power lasers
• Limitations on the attainable intensity of high power lasers
• Exact field ionization rates in the barrier suppression-regime from numerical TDSE calculations
• Anomalous radiative trapping in laser fields of extreme intensity
• Electron dynamics, gamma and electron-positron production by colliding laser pulses
• Optimized multibeam configuration for observation of QED cascades
• Laser-pulse-shape control of seeded QED cascades
• Ejection Energy of Photoelectrons in Strong Field Ionization
• Kinetic modelling of quantum effects in laser-beam interaction

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Laser-driven plasma pinching in $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ cascade
• Onset of electron-seeded cascades in generic electromagnetic fields
• Towards realistic simulations of QED cascades: non-ideal laser and electron seeding effects
• Field ionization in short and extremely intense laser pulses
• Particle trajectories, gamma-ray emission, and anomalous radiative trapping effects in magnetic dipole wave
• Ionization states for the multi-petawatt laser-QED regime
• Field ionization rate for PIC codes
• Testing strong-field QED with the avalanche precursor
• Optimized event generator for strong-field QED simulations within the hi-$\chi$ framework
• Pair production seeded by electrons in noble gases as a method for the laser intensity diagnostics