Simulations of laser-driven strong-field QED with Ptarmigan: Resolving wavelength-scale interference and $\gamma$-ray polarization

Abstract

Accurate modelling is necessary to support precision experiments investigating strong-field QED phenomena. This modelling is particularly challenging in the transition between the perturbative and nonperturbative regimes, where the normalized laser amplitude $a_0$ is comparable to unity and wavelength-scale interference is significant. Here we describe how to simulate nonlinear Compton scattering, Breit-Wheeler pair creation, and trident pair creation in this regime, using the Monte Carlo particle-tracking code Ptarmigan. This code simulates collisions between high-intensity lasers and beams of electrons or $\gamma$ rays, primarily in the framework of the locally monochromatic approximation (LMA). We benchmark our simulation results against full QED calculations for pulsed plane waves and show that they are accurate at the level of a few per cent, across the full range of particle energies and laser intensities. This work extends our previous results to linearly polarized lasers and arbitrarily polarized $\gamma$ rays.

19 pages, 6 figures; additional discussion of validity and updated figures; to appear in Physics of Plasmas

References in corpus (15)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Radiation Reaction Effects on Radiation Pressure Acceleration
• Quantum radiation reaction in laser-electron beam collisions
• Ultrarelativistic electron beam polarization in single-shot interaction with an ultraintense laser pulse
• Photon polarisation in electron-seeded pair-creation cascades
• Dense Polarized Positrons from Laser-Irradiated Foil Targets in the QED Regime
• Recursive algorithm for arrays of generalized Bessel functions: Numerical access to Dirac-Volkov solutions
• Higher fidelity simulations of nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair creation in intense laser pulses
• Fully polarized nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production in pulsed plane waves
• Photon polarization effects in polarized electron-positron pair production in a strong laser field
• Pulse envelope effect on nonlinear Compton scattering in electron-laser collisions
• Radiative polarization dynamics of relativistic electrons in an intense electromagnetic field
• Locally monochromatic two-step nonlinear trident process in a plane wave
• Classical Radiation Reaction in Red-Shifted Harmonics

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production using polarized photons from inverse Compton scattering
• Analytical solutions for quantum radiation reaction in high-intensity lasers
• Pair creation, backreaction, and resummation in strong fields
• Primer of Strong-Field Quantum Electrodynamics for Experimentalists
• Layout optimization for the LUXE-NPOD experiment
• Collision parameters needed to measure polarisation-dependent nonlinear pair creation
• Theory uncertainties in predictions of strong-field QED