Photon polarization effects in polarized electron-positron pair production in a strong laser field
Photon polarization effects in polarized electron-positron pair production in a strong laser field
Dai, Y.-N.; Shen, B.-F.; Li, J.-X.; Shaisultanov, R.; Hatsagortsyan, K. Z.; Keitel, C. H.; Chen, Y.-Y.
Deep understanding of the impact of photon polarization on pair production is essential for the efficient generation of laser-driven polarized positron beams and demands a complete description of polarization effects in strong-field QED processes. Employing fully polarization-resolved Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate correlated photon and electron (positron) polarization effects in the multiphoton Breit–Wheeler pair production process during the interaction of an ultrarelativistic electron beam with a counterpropagating elliptically polarized laser pulse. We show that the polarization of e−e+ pairs is degraded by 35% when the polarization of the intermediate photon is resolved, accompanied by an ∼13% decrease in the pair yield. Moreover, in this case, the polarization direction of energetic positrons at small deflection angles can even be reversed when high-energy photons with polarization parallel to the laser electric field are involved.
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Matter and Radiation at Extremes 7(2022), 014401
Online First (2021) DOI: 10.1063/5.0063633
Cited 12 times in Scopus
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Permalink: https://www.hzdr.de/publications/Publ-34048