Electron polarization in ultrarelativistic plasma current filamentation instabilities

Abstract

Plasma current filamentation of an ultrarelativistic electron beam impinging on an overdense plasma is investigated, with emphasis on radiation-induced electron polarization. Particle-in-cell simulations provide the classification and in-depth analysis of three different regimes of the current filaments, namely, the normal filament, abnormal filament, and quenching regimes. We show that electron radiative polarization emerges during the instability along the azimuthal direction in the momentum space, which significantly varies across the regimes. We put forward an intuitive Hamiltonian model to trace the origin of the electron polarization dynamics. In particular, we discern the role of nonlinear transverse motion of plasma filaments, which induces asymmetry in radiative spin flips, yielding an accumulation of electron polarization. Our results break the conventional perception that quasi-symmetric fields are inefficient for generating radiative spin-polarized beams, suggesting the potential of electron polarization as a source of new information on laboratory and astrophysical plasma instabilities.

7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Particle acceleration in relativistic collisionless shocks: Fermi process at last?
• QED cascades induced by circularly polarized laser fields
• Ultrarelativistic electron beam polarization in single-shot interaction with an ultraintense laser pulse
• Magnetic reconnection in the era of exascale computing and multiscale experiments
• Exact relativistic kinetic theory of an electron beam-plasma system: hierarchy of the competing modes in the system parameter space
• Coherent Electromagnetic Emission from Relativistic Magnetized Shocks
• Constraining the magnetic field structure in collisionless relativistic shocks with a radio afterglow polarization upper limit in GW170817
• Magnetic field amplification by the Weibel instability at planetary and astrophysical high-Mach-number shocks
• Radiative polarization dynamics of relativistic electrons in an intense electromagnetic field
• Weibel instability in hot plasma flows with production of gamma-rays and electron-positron pairs

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Spin-polarized electron beam generation in the colliding-pulse injection scheme
• Electron slingshot acceleration in relativistic preturbulent shocks explored via emitted photon polarization
• Laser-driven lepton polarization in the quantum radiation-dominated reflection regime
• Branching of high-current relativistic electron beam in porous materials
• Polarized QED Cascades over Pulsar Polar Caps
• Plasma acceleration of polarized particle beams
• The effect of the electron's spin magnetic moment on quantum radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Parameter space investigation for spin-dependent electron diffraction in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
• Electron penetration heating in turbulent magnetic loops driven by nonrelativistic laser-plasma interaction
• Intrinsic Nonlocality of Spin- and Polarization-Resolved Probabilities in Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics