Beam focus and longitudinal polarization influence on spin dynamics in the Kapitza-Dirac effect

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the influence of a longitudinal laser polarization component from beam focusing on spin dynamics in Kapitza-Dirac scattering by solving the relativistic Dirac equation with time-dependent perturbation theory. The transverse spacial dependence of the longitudinal beam polarization component is accounted for, by approximating a Gaussian beam with plane-wave components. We find that corrections from a longitudinal laser beam polarization component approximately scale with the second power of the diffraction angle $\epsilon$, from which we conclude that a related influence from beam focusing can be made negligibly small for sufficiently low beam foci.

16 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Pair production in laser fields oscillating in space and time
• Ultrarelativistic electron beam polarization in single-shot interaction with an ultraintense laser pulse
• Spin dynamics in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
• Spin-polarizing interferometric beam splitter for free electrons
• Electron-spin dynamics in elliptically polarized light waves
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• Spin in Compton scattering with pronounced polarization dynamics
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Parameter space investigation for spin-dependent electron diffraction in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
• Two-dimensional simulation of the spin-flip in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
• Strong coupling of virtual negative states in the Kapitza-Dirac effect