English

Spin and polarisation dependent LCFA rates for nonlinear Compton and Breit-Wheeler processes

Plasma Physics 2020-11-12 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

In this paper we derive and discuss the completely spin- and photon-polarisation dependent probability rates for nonlinear Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production. The locally constant field approximation, which is essential for applications in plasma-QED simulation codes, is rigorously derived from the strong-field QED matrix elements in the Furry picture for a general plane-wave background field. We discuss important polarisation correlation effects in the spectra of both processes. Asymptotic limits for both small and large values of χ\chi are derived and their spin/polarisation dependence is discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.11837,
  title  = {Spin and polarisation dependent LCFA rates for nonlinear Compton and Breit-Wheeler processes},
  author = {D. Seipt and B. King},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.11837},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

25 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:20:19.408Z