Photon polarization effects in polarized electron-positron pair production in a strong laser field

Abstract

Deep understanding of photon polarization impact on pair production is essential for the efficient creation of laser driven polarized positron beams, and demands a complete description of polarization effects in strong-field QED processes. We investigate, employing fully polarization resolved Monte Carlo simulations, the correlated photon and electron (positron) polarization effects in multiphoton Breit-Wheeler pair production process during the interaction of an ultrarelativistic electron beam with a counterpropagating elliptically polarized laser pulse. We showed that the polarization of e^-e^+ pairs is degraded by 35\%, when the polarization of the intermediate photon is resolved, accompanied with an approximately 13\% decrease of the pair yield. Moreover, the polarization direction of energetic positrons in small angle region is reversed, which originates from the pair production of hard photons with polarization parallel with electric field.

References in corpus (6)

• QED cascades induced by circularly polarized laser fields
• Ultrarelativistic electron beam polarization in single-shot interaction with an ultraintense laser pulse
• Photon polarisation in electron-seeded pair-creation cascades
• Note on the conjectured breakdown of QED perturbation theory in strong fields
• Scaling laws for positron production in laser--electron-beam collisions
• Numerical approach to the semiclassical method of radiation emission for arbitrary electron spin and photon polarization

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Simulations of laser-driven strong-field QED with Ptarmigan: Resolving wavelength-scale interference and $\gamma$-ray polarization
• Generation of High-Density High-Polarization Positrons via Single-Shot Strong Laser-Foil Interaction
• Kinetic theory for spin-polarized relativistic plasmas
• Laser-driven lepton polarization in the quantum radiation-dominated reflection regime
• Generation of Ultrarelativistic Vortex Leptons with Large Orbital Angular Momenta
• Evolution of chirality in a multiphoton pair production process
• Plasma acceleration of polarized particle beams
• Collision parameters needed to measure polarisation-dependent nonlinear pair creation
• Intrinsic Nonlocality of Spin- and Polarization-Resolved Probabilities in Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics