Laser-driven plasma pinching in $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ cascade

Abstract

The cascaded production and dynamics of electron-positron plasma in ultimately focused laser fields of extreme intensity are studied by 3D particle-in-cell simulations with the account for the relevant processes of quantum electrodynamics (QED). We show that, if the laser facility provides a total power above 20 PW, it is possible to trigger not only a QED cascade but also pinching in the produced electron-positron plasma. The plasma self-compression in this case leads to an abrupt rise of the peak density and magnetic (electric) field up to at least $10^{28}$ cm${}^{-3}$ and 1/20 (1/40) of the Schwinger field, respectively. Determining the actual limits and physics of this process might require quantum treatment beyond the used standard semiclassical approach. The proposed setup can thus provide extreme conditions for probing and exploring fundamental physics of the matter and vacuum.

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Cited by in corpus (21)

• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• The locally monochromatic approximation to QED in intense laser fields
• Laser-particle collider for multi-GeV photon production
• A uniform locally constant field approximation for photon-seeded pair production
• Pulse envelope effect on nonlinear Compton scattering in electron-laser collisions
• Plasma dynamics at the Schwinger limit and beyond
• Strategies for particle resampling in PIC simulations
• Multiple-colliding laser pulses as a basis for studying high-field high-energy physics
• Electron-positron annihilation into two photons in an intense plane-wave field
• One-photon pair-annihilation in pulsed plane-wave backgrounds
• Hydrodynamical model of QED cascade expansion in an extremely strong laser pulse
• Particle trajectories, gamma-ray emission, and anomalous radiative trapping effects in magnetic dipole wave
• Effects of colliding laser pulses polarization on $e^{-}{e}^{+}$ cascade development in extreme focusing
• High-order corrections to the radiation-free dynamics of an electron in the strongly radiation-dominated regime
• Optimized computation of tight focusing of short pulses using mapping to periodic space
• Attaining a strong-field QED signal at laser-electron colliders with optimized focusing
• Beamstrahlung-enhanced disruption in beam-beam interaction
• Optimized routines for event generators in QED-PIC codes
• Optimized event generator for strong-field QED simulations within the hi-$\chi$ framework
• Dense e${}^{-}$e${}^{+}$ plasma formation in magnetic dipole wave: vacuum breakdown by 10-PW class lasers
• On the upper limit of laser intensity attainable in non-ideal vacuum