Pulse envelope effects in nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair-creation

Abstract

The effect of the pulse envelope on electron-positron pair creation in a circularly-polarised laser pulse is investigated. Interference on the length scale of the pulse envelope, and smoothness of the pulse edges are found to influence the pair spectrum. A toy model of a flat-top pulse is used to identify pulse envelope effects inaccessible to local approaches. Broadening of channel openings and a widening of the energy and transverse momentum distribution of the pair are found to receive contributions that are below the local harmonic threshold. By comparing pair yields in a flat-top, sine-squared and Gaussian pulse, a link between pulse shape and photon-polarised Breit-Wheeler is found. In the transverse momentum distribution, a signal of pulse envelope interference is found in an azimuthal asymmetry, which appears in intense fields and persists in long pulses.

11 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (14)

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• Testing numerical implementations of strong field electrodynamics
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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Higher fidelity simulations of nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair creation in intense laser pulses
• Non-linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in collisions of bremsstrahlung $\gamma -$quanta and a tightly focussed laser pulse
• High-resolution modeling of nonlinear Compton scattering in focused laser pulses
• Locally monochromatic two-step nonlinear trident process in a plane wave
• Positron energy distribution in factorized trident process