Abstract
We have studied the production of electron–positron pairs due to polarization of vacuum in the presence of the strong electromagnetic field of two counterpropagating laser pulses. The structure of the electromagnetic field with the circular polarization has been determined using the 3D model of focused laser pulses, which was proposed by Narozhny and Fofanov. Analytic calculations have shown that the electric and magnetic fields are almost parallel to each other in the focal region when the laser pulses are completely transverse in the electric (E-wave) or magnetic (H-wave) field. On the other hand, the electric and magnetic fields are almost orthogonal when laser pulses consist of a mixture of E- and H-waves of the same amplitude. It has been found that although the latter configuration of colliding laser pulses has a much higher pair production threshold, it can generate much shorter electron–positron pulses as compared to the former configuration. The dependence of the production efficiency of pairs and their spatiotemporal distribution on the polarization of laser pulses has been analyzed using the structure of the electromagnetic field in the focal plane.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A. di Piazza, C. Müller, K. Z. Hatsagortsyan, and C. H. Keitel, Rev. Mod. Phys. 84, 1177 (2012).
F. Sauter, Z. Phys. 69, 742 (1931).
J. Schwinger, Phys. Rev. 82, 664 (1951).
V. Yanovsky et al., Opt. Express 16, 2109 (2008).
D. L. Burke et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1626 (1997).
C. Bula, K. T. McDonald, E. J. Prebys, C. Bamber, S. Boege, T. Kotseroglou, A. C. Melissinos, D. D. Meyerhofer, W. Ragg, D. L. Burke, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3116 (1996).
T. Tajima and G. Mourou, Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 5, 031301 (2002).
M. Dunne, Nat. Phys. 2, 2 (2006).
E. Brezin and C. Itzykson, Phys. Rev. D 2, 1191 (1970).
S. S. Bulanov, Phys. Rev. E 69, 036408 (2004).
S. S. Bulanov, V. D. Mur, N. B. Narozhny, J. Nees, and V. S. Popov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 220404 (2010).
S. Bulanov, N. Narozhny, V. Mur, and V. Popov, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 102, 9 (2006).
A. R. Bell and J. G. Kirk, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 200403 (2008).
M. Ruf, G. R. Mocken, C. Müller, K. Z. Hatsagortsyan, and C. H. Keitel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 080402 (2009).
F. Hebenstreit, R. Alkofer, and H. Gies, Phys. Rev. D 82, 105026 (2010).
E. N. Nerush, I. Y. Kostyukov, A. M. Fedotov, N. B. Narozhny, N. V. Elkina, and H. Ruhl, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 035001 (2011).
C. Kohlfürst, M. Mitter, G. von Winckel, F. Hebenstreit, and R. Alkofer, Phys. Rev. D 88, 045028 (2013).
A. Wollert, H. Bauke, and C. H. Keitel, Phys. Rev. D 91, 125026 (2015).
W. Su, M. Jiang, Z. Q. Lv, Y. J. Li, Z. M. Sheng, R. Grobe, and Q. Su, Phys. Rev. A 86, 013422 (2012).
Q. Su, W. Su, Q. Z. Lv, M. Jiang, X. Lu, Z. M. Sheng, and R. Grobe, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 253202 (2012).
A. Gonoskov, I. Gonoskov, C. Harvey, A. Ilderton, A. Kim, M. Marklund, G. Mourou, and A. Sergeev, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 060404 (2013).
N. Narozhny and M. Fofanov, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 90, 753 (2000).
A. Fedotov, Laser Phys. 19, 214 (2009).
Y. I. Salamin, G. R. Mocken, and C. H. Keitel, Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams 5, 101301 (2002).
A. M. Fedotov, N. B. Narozhny, G. Mourou, and G. Korn, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 080402 (2010).
N. Narozhny, Laser Phys. 15, 1458 (2005).
V. Berestetskii, L. Pitaevskii, and E. Lifshitz, Course of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 4: Quantum Electrodynamics (Nauka, Moscow, 1989; Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 2012).
L. Landau and E. Lifshitz, The Classical Theory of Fields, 4th ed., vol. 2 of Course of Theoretical Physics (Pergamon, Amsterdam, 1975).
D. J. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, 3rd ed. (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1999).
V. Popov, Phys. Lett. A 298, 83 (2002).
I. Gonoskov, A. Aiello, S. Heugel, and G. Leuchs, Phys. Rev. A 86, 053836 (2012).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Original Russian Text © C. Banerjee, M.P. Singh, 2017, published in Zhurnal Eksperimental’noi i Teoreticheskoi Fiziki, 2017, Vol. 152, No. 1, pp. 18–29.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Banerjee, C., Singh, M.P. Effect of polarization on the structure of electromagnetic field and spatiotemporal distribution of e + e – pairs generated by colliding laser pulses. J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 125, 12–21 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063776117060097
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063776117060097