Polarized QED cascades

Abstract

By taking the spin and polarization of the electrons, positrons and photons into account in the strong-field QED processes of nonlinear Compton emission and pair production, we find that the growth rate of QED cascades in ultra-intense laser fields can be substantially reduced. While this means that fewer particles are produced, we also found them to be highly polarized. We further find that the high-energy tail of the particle spectra is polarized opposite to that expected from Sokolov-Ternov theory, which cannot be explained by just taking into account spin-asymmetries in the pair production process, but results significantly from "spin-straggling". We employ a kinetic equation approach for the electron, positron and photon distributions, each of them spin/polarization-resolved, with the QED effects of photon emission and pair production modelled by a spin/polarization dependent Boltzmann-type collision operator. For photon-seeded cascades, depending on the photon polarization, we find an excess or a shortage of particle production in the early stages of cascade development, which provides a path towards a controlled experiment. Throughout this paper we focus on rotating electric field configuration, which represent an idealized model and allows for a straightforward interpretation of the observed effects.

31 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Loops and polarization in strong-field QED
• Resummation of quantum radiation reaction in plane waves
• From local to nonlocal: higher fidelity simulations of photon emission in intense laser pulses
• Electron spin- and photon polarization-resolved probabilities of strong-field QED processes
• Simulations of laser-driven strong-field QED with Ptarmigan: Resolving wavelength-scale interference and $\gamma$-ray polarization
• Fully polarized nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in pulsed plane waves
• Onset of electron-seeded cascades in generic electromagnetic fields
• Pulse envelope effects in nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair-creation
• Helicity transfer in strong laser fields via the electron anomalous magnetic moment
• Spin and polarization effects on the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in laser-plasma interaction
• Resummation of quantum radiation reaction and induced polarization
• Kinetic theory for spin-polarized relativistic plasmas
• Locally monochromatic two-step nonlinear trident process in a plane wave
• Pair Production in Circularly Polarized Waves
• High-order corrections to the radiation-free dynamics of an electron in the strongly radiation-dominated regime
• Positron energy distribution in factorized trident process
• Polarized QED Cascades over Pulsar Polar Caps
• Testing strong-field QED with the avalanche precursor