Enhanced electron-positron pair production by two obliquely incident lasers interacting with a solid target

Abstract

Enhanced electron-positron (e − e + ) pair production using two obliquely incident lasers interacting with a solid target is investigated through multi-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Two obliquely incident lasers can strengthen the laser-hole boring effect, which enhances the reflected focusing laser field and the consequent quantum electrodynamics effects. PIC simulations show that by using two 10 PW-scale lasers, a high-yield (3×10 10 ) overdense (∼10 22 cm −3 ) positron beam can be generated and laser to pair energy conversion efficiency can be increased up to one percent. Such positron yield is fifty times higher than that produced from a single laser with the same peak power. The robustness of such a scheme is confirmed by numerically studying parametric influences of the oblique incident angle, temporal asynchrony and phase difference between the two lasers. It is found that the temporal asynchrony and the phase difference have minor effects on the pair production. The proposed scheme may provide great potential for high dense pair plasma generation in experiments with coming approachable high power laser facilities.

Ultrabright γ-ray emission from the interaction of an intense laser pulse with a near-critical-density plasma*

“…[4,5] When an ultrahighintensity laser interacts with a plasma, the electron motion becomes relativistic, [6,7] and quantum electrodynamics (QED) effects such as γ-ray emission [8] and electron-positron pair production become significant. [9,10] Considerable theoretical and numerical [11][12][13] research on the generation of high-energy electrons and ultrabright γ-rays has been conducted for applications in medicine, [14] industry, [15] and astrophysics. [16] Many researchers have proposed various schemes for obtaining high-energy electron sources for γ-ray generation, such as laser-driven direct laser acceleration (DLA), [17,18] radiation pressure acceleration, [19] and laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA).…”

Beamstrahlung-enhanced disruption in beam-beam interaction

“…[10,21]. In general, the interplay between radiation of hard-photons and pair production can lead to a very fast growth of the total number of particles -an effect known as QED cascade, which has recently drawn a lot of attention [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Such QED cascades can also develop in colliding beam scenarios.…”

Collective plasma effects of electron-positron pairs in beam-driven QED cascades

“…Tremendous effects have been made to understand the QED plasma dynamics [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] and to explore possibilities of their preparation in laboratories [48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60] . The QED plasma dynamics 9,[60][61][62] is characterized by strong field QED and collective plasma effects.…”