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 (22)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Dense Polarized Positrons from Laser-Irradiated Foil Targets in the QED Regime
• Impact of the laser spatio-temporal shape on Breit-Wheeler pair production
• Signature of Collective Plasma Effects in Beam-Driven QED Cascades
• High-energy gamma-photon polarization in nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production and gamma-polarimetry
• Photon polarization effects in polarized electron-positron pair production in a strong laser field
• Onset of electron-seeded cascades in generic electromagnetic fields
• Creation and direct laser acceleration of positrons in a single stage
• Spin and polarization effects on the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in laser-plasma interaction
• Laser pulse-length effects in trident pair production
• Worldline instantons for nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production and Compton scattering
• Probing strong-field QED in beam-plasma collisions
• Collective plasma effects of electron-positron pairs in beam-driven QED cascades
• Reaching the high laser intensity by a radiating electron
• Creating pair plasmas with observable collective effects
• Testing strong-field QED with the avalanche precursor
• From linear to nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in laser-solid interactions
• QScatter: Numerical Framework for Fast Prediction of Particle Distributions in Electron-Laser Scattering
• Theory uncertainties in predictions of strong-field QED
• Optimal laser focusing for positron production in laser-electron scattering
• Photon-polarization-resolved linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in a laser-plasma system
• Collision parameters needed to measure polarisation-dependent nonlinear pair creation