Polarization operator approach to pair creation in short laser pulses
Abstract
Short-pulse effects are investigated for the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process, i.e. the production of an electron-positron pair induced by a gamma photon inside an intense plane-wave laser pulse. To obtain the total pair-creation probability we verify (to leading-order) the cutting rule for the polarization operator in the realm of strong-field QED by an explicit calculation. Using a double-integral representation for the leading-order contribution to the polarization operator, compact expressions for the total pair-creation probability inside an arbitrary plane-wave background field are derived. Correspondingly, the photon wave function including leading-order radiative corrections in the laser field is obtained via the Schwinger-Dyson equation in the quasistatic approximation. Moreover, the influence of the carrier-envelope phase and of the laser pulse shape on the total pair-creation probability in a linearly polarized laser pulse is investigated, and the validity of the (local) constant-crossed field approximation analyzed. It is shown that with presently available technology pair-creation probabilities of the order of ten percent could be reached for a single gamma photon.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1406.7235,
title = {Polarization operator approach to pair creation in short laser pulses},
author = {Sebastian Meuren and Karen Z. Hatsagortsyan and Christoph H. Keitel and Antonino Di Piazza},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.7235},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
19 pages, 14 figures