Stimulated vacuum emission and photon absorption in strong electromagnetic fields
arXiv:2202.06886 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.116005
Abstract
According to quantum electrodynamics (QED), a strong external field can make the vacuum state decay producing electron-positron pairs. Here we investigate emission of soft photons which accompanies a nonperturbative process of pair production. Our analysis is carried out within the Furry picture to first order in the fine-structure constant. It is shown that the presence of photons in the initial state gives rise to an additional (stimulated) channel of photon emission besides the pure vacuum one. On the other hand, the number of final (signal) photons includes also a negative contribution due to photon absorption within the pair production process. These contributions are evaluated and compared. To obtain quantitative predictions in the domain of realistic field parameters, we employ the WKB approach. We propose to use an optical probe photon beam, whose intensity changes as it traverses a spatial region where a strong electric component of a background laser field is present. It is demonstrated that relative intensity changes on the level of can be experimentally observed once the intensity of the strong background field exceeds within a large laser wavelength interval. This finding is expected to significantly support possible experimental investigations of nonlinear QED phenomena in the nonperturbative regime.
arXiv comment11 pages, 6 figures
References in corpus (40)
- Extremely high-intensity laser interactions with fundamental quantum systems
- Experimental evidence of radiation reaction in the collision of a high-intensity laser pulse with a laser-wakefield accelerated electron beam
- Experimental signatures of the quantum nature of radiation reaction in the field of an ultra-intense laser
- Multiple colliding electromagnetic pulses: a way to lower the threshold of pair production from vacuum
- Pair Production from Vacuum at the Focus of an X-Ray Free Electron Laser
- Worldline Instantons II: The Fluctuation Prefactor
- New Strong-Field QED Effects at ELI: Nonperturbative Vacuum Pair Production
- The Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses
- Vacuum instability in external fields
- Measuring Vacuum Polarisation with High Power Lasers
- Interference Effects in Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production for Time-Dependent Laser Pulses
- Quantum Vacuum Experiments Using High Intensity Lasers
- Two-photon Compton process in pulsed intense laser fields
- Exploring high-intensity QED at ELI
- Implementing quantum electrodynamics with ultracold atomic systems
- Radiation reaction in strong field QED
- Stimulated photon emission from the vacuum
- Generation of harmonics by a focused laser beam in vacuum
- All-optical signatures of Strong-Field QED in the vacuum emission picture
- Three-pulse photon-photon scattering
- Photon-photon scattering at the high-intensity frontier
- Scattering in plane-wave backgrounds: infra-red effects and pole structure
- Exact WKB analysis of the vacuum pair production by time-dependent electric fields
- Dynamically assisted Schwinger effect beyond the spatially-uniform-field approximation
- All-optical signatures of quantum vacuum nonlinearities in generic laser fields
- Momentum distribution of particles created in space-time-dependent colliding laser pulses
- Electron-positron pair production in external electric fields varying both in space and time
- Pair production in temporally and spatially oscillating fields
- Optical lattice quantum simulator for QED in strong external fields: spontaneous pair creation and the Sauter-Schwinger effect
- Boosting quantum vacuum signatures by coherent harmonic focusing
- Sauter-Schwinger effect in a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductor
- Low-dimensional approach to pair production in an oscillating electric field: Application to bandgap graphene layers
- Analog Sauter-Schwinger effect in semiconductors for spacetime-dependent fields
- Photon emission in strong fields beyond the locally-constant field approximation
- Total yield of electron-positron pairs produced from vacuum in strong electromagnetic fields: validity of the locally constant field approximation
- Collisional strong-field QED kinetic equations from first principles
- Reducible contributions to quantum electrodynamics in external fields
- Afterglow of the dynamical Schwinger process: soft photons amass
- Radiation signal accompanying the Schwinger effect
- Kinetic equation approach to graphene in strong external fields