Ultrarelativistic electron beam polarization in single-shot interaction with an ultraintense laser pulse

Abstract

Spin-polarization of an ultrarelativistic electron beam head-on colliding with an ultraintense laser pulse is investigated in the quantum radiation-reaction regime. We develop a Monte-Carlo method to model electron radiative spin effects in arbitrary electromagnetic fields by employing spin-resolved radiation probabilities in the local constant field approximation. Due to spin-dependent radiation reaction, the applied elliptically polarized laser pulse polarizes the initially unpolarized electron beam and splits it along the propagation direction into two oppositely transversely polarized parts with a splitting angle of about tens of milliradians. Thus, a dense electron beam with above 70\% polarization can be generated in tens of femtoseconds. The proposed method demonstrates a way for relativistic electron beam polarization with currently achievable laser facilities.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Semiclassical probability of radiation of twisted photons in the ultrarelativistic limit
• Relativistic electron spin dynamics in a strong unipolar laser field
• Numerical approach to the semiclassical method of radiation emission for arbitrary electron spin and photon polarization
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