Sauter-Schwinger effect for colliding laser pulses
arXiv:2107.08741 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.241801
Abstract
Via a combination of analytical and numerical methods, we study electron-positron pair creation by the electromagnetic field of two colliding laser pulses. Employing a generalized WKB approach, we find that the pair creation rate along the symmetry plane (where one would expect the maximum contribution) displays the same exponential dependence as for a purely time-dependent electric field . The pre-factor in front of this exponential does also contain corrections due to focusing or de-focusing effects induced by the spatially inhomogeneous magnetic field. We compare our analytical results to numerical simulations using the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner method and find good agreement.
Article: 7 pages, 1 figure; Appendix: 9 pages, 5 figures; v3: added discussions on numerics and convergences as well as curvature contributions in the appendix, added new references
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