Scaling laws for positron production in laser--electron-beam collisions

Abstract

Showers of $\gamma$-rays and positrons are produced when a high-energy electron beam collides with a super-intense laser pulse. We present scaling laws for the electron beam energy loss, the $\gamma$-ray spectrum, and the positron yield and energy that are valid in the non-linear, radiation-reaction--dominated regime. As an application we demonstrate that by employing the collision of a $>$GeV electron beam with a laser pulse of intensity $>5\times 10^{21}{\text{Wcm}}^{-2}$, today's high-intensity laser facilities are capable of producing $O(10^4)$ positrons per shot via light-by-light scattering.

12 pages, 9 figures; eq 5 and references corrected

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Laser pulse-length effects in trident pair production