Radiative polarization dynamics of relativistic electrons in an intense electromagnetic field

Abstract

We propose a self-consistent model which utilizes the polarization vector to theoretically describe the evolution of spin polarization of relativistic electrons in an intense electromagnetic field. The variation of radiative polarization due to instantaneous no photon emission is introduced into our model, which extends the applicability of the polarization vector model derived from the nonlinear Compton scattering under local constant crossed-field approximation to the complex electromagnetic environment in laser plasma interaction. According to this model, we develop a Monte Carlo method to simulate the electron spin under the influence of radiation and precession simultaneously. Our model is consistent with the quantum physical picture that spin can only be described by a probability distribution before measurement, and it contains the entire information on the spin. The correctness of our model is confirmed by the successful reproduction of the Sokolov-Ternov effect and the comparison of the simulation results with other models in the literature. The results show the superiority in accuracy, applicability, and computational efficiency of our model, and we believe that our model is a better choice to deal with the electron spin in particle-in-cell simulation for laser plasma interaction.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Nonlinear collective effects in photon-photon and photon-plasma interactions
• The Deuteron Spin-dependent Structure Function g1d and its First Moment
• Pair production in counter-propagating laser beams
• Ultrarelativistic electron beam polarization in single-shot interaction with an ultraintense laser pulse
• Radiation reaction in electron-beam interactions with high-intensity lasers
• Relativistic Plasma Physics in Supercritical Fields
• Production of highly-polarized positrons using polarized electrons at MeV energies
• Production of Highly Polarized Positron Beams via Helicity Transfer from Polarized Electrons in a Strong Laser Field
• Stochasticity in radiative polarization of ultrarelativistic electrons in an ultrastrong laser pulse
• Generalizing the Sokolov-Ternov effect for radiative polarization in intense laser fields

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Dense Polarized Positrons from Laser-Irradiated Foil Targets in the QED Regime
• Electron polarization in ultrarelativistic plasma current filamentation instabilities
• Simulations of laser-driven strong-field QED with Ptarmigan: Resolving wavelength-scale interference and $\gamma$-ray polarization
• Helicity transfer in strong laser fields via the electron anomalous magnetic moment
• Kinetic theory for spin-polarized relativistic plasmas
• Laser-driven lepton polarization in the quantum radiation-dominated reflection regime
• Plasma acceleration of polarized particle beams
• Production of multi-oriented polarization for relativistic electron beams via a mutable filter for nonlinear Compton scattering
• Intrinsic Nonlocality of Spin- and Polarization-Resolved Probabilities in Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics