Deciphering in situ electron dynamics of ultrarelativistic plasma via polarization pattern of emitted gamma photons

Abstract

Understanding and interpretation of the dynamics of ultrarelativistic plasma is a challenge, which calls for the development of methods for \textit{in situ} probing the plasma dynamical characteristics. We put forward a new method, harnessing polarization properties of $\gamma$-photons emitted from a non-pre-polarized plasma irradiated by a circularly polarized pulse. We show that the angular pattern of $\gamma$-photon linear polarization is explicitly correlated with the dynamics of the radiating electrons, which provides information on the laser-plasma interaction regime. Furthermore, with the $\gamma$-photon circular polarization originating from the electron radiative spin-flips, the plasma susceptibility to quantum electrodynamical processes is gauged. Our study demonstrates that the polarization signal of emitted $\gamma$-photons can be a versatile information source, which would be beneficial for the research fields of laser-driven plasma, accelerator science, and laboratory astrophysics.

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Electron polarization in ultrarelativistic plasma current filamentation instabilities
• Spin-polarized electron beam generation in the colliding-pulse injection scheme
• Laser-driven lepton polarization in the quantum radiation-dominated reflection regime
• Electron slingshot acceleration in relativistic preturbulent shocks explored via emitted photon polarization
• 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
• Photon-polarization-resolved linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in a laser-plasma system