Higher-Dimensional Caustics in Nonlinear Compton Scattering

Abstract

A description of the spectral and angular distributions of Compton scattered light in collisions of intense laser pulses with high-energy electrons is unwieldy and usually requires numerical simulations. However, due to the large number of parameters affecting the spectra such numerical investigations can become computationally expensive. Using methods of catastrophe theory we predict higher-dimensional caustics in the spectra of the Compton scattered light, which are associated with bright narrow-band spectral lines, and in the simplest case can be controlled by the value of the linear chirp of the pulse. These findings require no full-scale calculations and have direct consequences for the photon yield enhancement of future nonlinear Compton scattering x-ray or gamma-ray sources.

Laser-Particle Collider for Multi-GeV Photon Production

“…The building and planning of several multi-PW laser facilities [1][2][3][4][5] and the accessibility of PW-class systems [6] have recently stimulated a strong interest in theoretical analysis of processes caused by the radiation reaction and by the phenomena of strong-field quantum electrodynamics (QED). The clarification of various theoretical aspects [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] as well as the development of analytical [15] and numerical [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] approaches has been instrumental in revealing various peculiar effects such as stochasticity [23][24][25], straggling [17,26], quantum quenching [27], trapping in travelling [28,29] and standing electromagnetic (EM) waves [25,[30][31][32][33] and the alteration of ponderomotive effects [25,34]. These findings encouraged several promising proposals of both current [35,36] and future experiments.…”

Impact of the quantized transverse motion on radiation emission in a Dirac harmonic oscillator

“…Now, the constant difference between δv x (t) and v x (t) can be absorbed in the constant of integration C 1 in Eq. (29)…”

High-brilliance ultra-narrow-band x-rays via electron radiation in colliding laser pulses

“…Alternative schemes rely on Thomson-and Comptonscattering [13][14][15][16], and recently also on the radiation from laser-plasma interactions [17][18][19][20]. The advancement of compact and powerful laser systems revived interest to these sources [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. The Compton scattering (CS) source is based on a collision of a laser pulse with a relativistic electron beam, as shown in Fig.…”