Vacuum refractive indices and helicity flip in strong-field QED

Dinu, Victor; Heinzl, T.; Ilderton, Anton; Marklund, Mattias; Torgrimsson, Greger

doi:10.1103/physrevd.89.125003

Cited by 145 publications

(214 citation statements)

References 72 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

208

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Again many variants of this fluctuation-based descriptions exist [14][15][16]. The fact that both descriptions are equivalent is a manifestation of the optical theorem (for a recent discussion in the context of pair production, see [17,18]). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Schwinger Pair Production

Gies

Torgrimsson

2016

Phys. Rev. Lett.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigate Schwinger pair production in spatially inhomogeneous electric backgrounds. A critical point for the onset of pair production can be approached by fields that marginally provide sufficient electrostatic energy for an off-shell long-range electron-positron fluctuation to become a real pair. Close to this critical point, we observe features of universality which are analogous to continuous phase transitions in critical phenomena with the pair-production rate serving as an order parameter: electric backgrounds can be subdivided into universality classes and the onset of pair production exhibits characteristic scaling laws. An appropriate design of the electric background field can interpolate between power-law scaling, essential BKT-type scaling and a power-law scaling with log corrections. The corresponding critical exponents only depend on the large-scale features of the electric background, whereas the microscopic details of the background play the role of irrelevant perturbations not affecting criticality.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Schwinger Pair Production

Gies

Torgrimsson

2016

Phys. Rev. Lett.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Unfortunately, the dependence of this non-perturbative phenomenon on the field profile E(t, r) away from the constant field approximation is still mostly terra incognita. There are many results for fields which depend on one coordinate only, such as space x or time t (see, e.g., [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]), one of the light-cone coordinates x ± = t ± x (see, e.g., [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]), or other linear combinations of x and t [29]. In these cases, the underlying (Dirac or Klein-Fock-Gordon) equation simplifies to an ordinary differential equation (allowing for a WKB approach, for example, see also [30][31][32][33][34]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect in inhomogeneous electric fields

Schneider

Schützhold

2016

J. High Energ. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Via the world-line instanton method, we study electron-positron pair creation by a strong (but sub-critical) electric field of the profile E/ cosh 2 (kx) superimposed by a weaker pulse E / cosh 2 (ωt). If the temporal Keldysh parameter γ ω = mω/(qE) exceeds a threshold value γ crit ω which depends on the spatial Keldysh parameter γ k = mk/(qE), we find a drastic enhancement of the pair creation probability -reporting on what we believe to be the first analytic non-perturbative result for the interplay between temporal and spatial field dependences E(t, x) in the Sauter-Schwinger effect. Finally, we speculate whether an analogous effect (drastic enhancement of tunneling probability) could occur in other scenarios such as stimulated nuclear decay, for example.

show abstract

“…Furthermore, it is certainly interesting to study vacuum birefringence and photon diffraction effects in high-intensity laser beams prepared in a distinct higher Laguerre-or Hermite-Gaussian mode. So far, theoretical studies of these effects typically assumed the high-intensity laser beams to be prepared in the fundamental Gaussian mode [47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]; for an exception cf. Ref.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photon polarization tensor in pulsed Hermite- and Laguerre-Gaussian beams

Karbstein

Mosman

2017

Phys. Rev. D

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, we provide analytical expressions for the photon polarization tensor in pulsed Hermite-and Laguerre-Gaussian laser beams. Our results are based on a locally constant field approximation of the one-loop Heisenberg-Euler effective Lagrangian for quantum electrodynamics.Hence, by construction they are limited to slowly varying electromagnetic fields, varying on spatial and temporal scales significantly larger than the Compton wavelength/time of the electron. The latter criterion is fulfilled by all laser beams currently available in the laboratory. Our findings will, e.g., be relevant for the study of vacuum birefringence experienced by probe photons brought into collision with a high-intensity laser pulse which can be represented as a superposition of either Hermite-or Laguerre-Gaussian modes. * Electronic address: felix.karbstein@uni-jena.de † Electronic address: mosmanea@tpu.ru

show abstract

Vacuum refractive indices and helicity flip in strong-field QED

Cited by 145 publications

References 72 publications

Critical Schwinger Pair Production

Critical Schwinger Pair Production

Dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect in inhomogeneous electric fields

Photon polarization tensor in pulsed Hermite- and Laguerre-Gaussian beams

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About