Catalysis of Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2010-11-11 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We propose a new catalysis mechanism for non-perturbative vacuum electron-positron pair production, by superimposing a plane-wave X-ray probe beam with a strongly focused optical laser pulse, such as is planned at the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) facility. We compute the absorption coefficient arising from vacuum polarization effects for photons below threshold in a strong electric field. This set-up should facilitate the (first) observation of this non-perturbative QED effect with planned light sources such as ELI yielding an envisioned intensity of order 10^{26}W/cm^2.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0908.0948,
title = {Catalysis of Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production},
author = {Gerald V. Dunne and Holger Gies and Ralf Schützhold},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.0948},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 2 figures; v2 clarifications and references added