English

Damping of electromagnetic waves due to electron-positron pair production

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2016-09-06 v1

Abstract

The problem of the backreaction during the process of electron-positron pair production by a circularly polarized electromagnetic wave propagating in a plasma is investigated. A model based on the relativistic Boltzmann-Vlasov equation with a source term corresponding to the Schwinger formula for the pair creation rate is used. The damping of the wave, the nonlinear up-shift of its frequency due to the plasma density increase and the effect of the damping on the wave polarization and on the background plasma acceleration are investigated as a function of the wave amplitude.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0409301,
  title  = {Damping of electromagnetic waves due to electron-positron pair production},
  author = {S. S. Bulanov and A. M. Fedotov and F. Pegoraro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0409301},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

11 pages, 5 figures; revtex4