Spin and polarization effects on the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in laser-plasma interaction

Abstract

The spin effect of electrons/positrons ($e^{-}$/$e^{+}$) and polarization effect of $\gamma$ photons are investigated in the interaction of two counter-propagating linearly polarized 10-PW-class laser pulses with a thin foil target. The processes of nonlinear Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production based on spin- and polarization-resolved probabilities are implemented into the particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithm by Monte Carlo methods. It is found from PIC simulations that the average degree of linear polarization of emitted $\gamma$ photons can exceed $50\%$. This polarization effect leads to reduced positron yield by about $10\%$. At some medium positron energies, the reduction can reach $20\%$. Furthermore, we also observe that the local spin polarization of $e^{-}$/$e^{+}$ leads to a slight decrease of the positron yield about $2\%$ and some anomalous phenomena about the positron spectrum and photon polarization at the high-energy range, due to spin-dependent photon emissions. Our results indicate that spin and polarization effects should be considered in calculating the pair production and laser-plasma interaction with the laser power of 10-PW class.

arXiv comment14 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Dense Polarized Positrons from Laser-Irradiated Foil Targets in the QED Regime
• Generation of polarized positron beams via collisions of ultrarelativistic electron beams
• Polarized QED Cascades over Pulsar Polar Caps
• Plasma acceleration of polarized particle beams
• Intrinsic Nonlocality of Spin- and Polarization-Resolved Probabilities in Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics
• Photon-polarization-resolved linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in a laser-plasma system