A laser-plasma platform for photon-photon physics

Abstract

We describe a laser-plasma platform for photon-photon collision experiments to measure fundamental quantum electrodynamic processes such as the linear Breit-Wheeler process with real photons. The platform has been developed using the Gemini laser facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. A laser wakefield accelerator and a bremsstrahlung convertor are used to generate a collimated beam of photons with energies of hundreds of MeV, that collide with keV x-ray photons generated by a laser heated plasma target. To detect the pairs generated by the photon-photon collisions, a magnetic transport system has been developed which directs the pairs onto scintillation-based and hybrid silicon pixel single particle detectors. We present commissioning results from an experimental campaign using this laser-plasma platform for photon-photon physics, demonstrating successful generation of both photon sources, characterisation of the magnetic transport system and calibration of the single particle detectors, and discuss the feasibility of this platform for the observation of the Breit-Wheeler process. The design of the platform will also serve as the basis for the investigation of strong-field quantum electrodynamic processes such as the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler and the Trident process, or eventually, photon-photon scattering.

arXiv comment28 pages, 14 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Angle-dependent pair production in the polarized two-photon Breit-Wheeler process
• Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production using polarized photons from inverse Compton scattering
• Pair Production in Circularly Polarized Waves
• Experimental characterisation of a single-shot spectrometer for high-flux, GeV-scale gamma-ray beams
• High brilliance $\gamma$-ray generation from the laser interaction in a carbon plasma channel
• Monte Carlo modelling of the linear Breit-Wheeler process within the GEANT4 framework