Vacuum birefringence and diffraction at XFEL: from analytical estimates to optimal parameters

Abstract

We study vacuum birefringence and x-ray photon scattering in the head-on collision of x-ray free electron and high-intensity laser pulses. Resorting to analytical approximations for the numbers of attainable signal photons, we analyze the behavior of the phenomenon under the variation of various experimental key-parameters and provide new analytical scalings. Our optimized approximations allow for quantitatively accurate results on the one-percent level. We in particular demonstrate that an appropriate choice of the x-ray focus and pulse duration can significantly improve the signal for given laser parameters, using the experimental parameters to be available at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields at the European XFEL as example. Our results are essential for the identification of the optimal choice of parameters in a discovery experiment of vacuum birefringence at the high-intensity frontier.

11 pages, 7 figures; matches journal version

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Cited by in corpus (17)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Direct accessibility of the fundamental constants governing light-by-light scattering
• Vacuum birefringence at x-ray free-electron lasers
• Report on Progress in Physics: Observation of the Breit-Wheeler Process and Vacuum Birefringence in Heavy-Ion Collisions
• Letter of Intent: Towards a Vacuum Birefringence Experiment at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields
• Observing Light-by-Light Scattering in Vacuum with an Asymmetric Photon Collider
• Towards a direct measurement of the quantum vacuum Lagrangian coupling coefficients using two counter propagating super-intense laser pulses
• All-optical Quantum Vacuum Signals in Two-Beam Collision
• Fundamental constants from photon-photon scattering in three-beam collisions
• On Measuring Stimulated Photon-photon Scattering using Multiple Ultraintense Lasers
• Experimental estimates of the photon background in a potential light-by-light scattering study
• A dark-field setup for the measurement of light-by-light scattering with high-intensity lasers
• Two-beam laser photon merging
• Numerical optimization of quantum vacuum signals
• Simulating vacuum birefringence with a diffractive beam propagation code
• Limitations of the paraxial beam model in the study of quantum vacuum signals
• X-ray vacuum diffraction at finite spatio-temporal offset