Related papers: Single-laser scheme for reaching strong field QED …
Exploring quantum electrodynamics in the most extreme conditions, where electron-positron pairs can emerge in the presence of a strong background field, is now becoming possible in Compton collisions between ultraintense lasers and…
A model for laser light absorption in electron-positron plasmas self-consistently created via QED cascades is described. The laser energy is mainly absorbed due to hard photon emission via nonlinear Compton scattering. The degree of…
With today's multi-petawatt lasers, testing quantum electrodynamics (QED) in the strong field regime, where the electric field exceeds the Schwinger critical field in the rest frame of an electron, becomes within reach. Inverse Compton…
Strong-field quantum electrodynamics predicts electron-seeded electron-positron pair cascades when the electric field in the rest-frame of the seed electron approaches the Sauter-Schwinger field, i.e. $\eta = E_{RF}/E_S \sim 1$. Electrons…
Relativistic laser pulses can accelerate electrons up to energies of several GeV during the interaction with gaseous targets through the direct laser acceleration (DLA) mechanism. While the electrons are accelerated to high energies, they…
Converting light into matter has been a longstanding goal in physics, particularly the creation of electron-positron pairs through quantum electrodynamic (QED) processes. While current approaches using multiple colliding laser pulses can…
Understanding the interplay of strong-field QED and collective plasma effects is important for explaining extreme astrophysical environments like magnetars. It has been shown that QED pair plasmas is possible to be produced and observed by…
The next generation of Petawatt-class lasers presents the opportunity to study positron production and acceleration experimentally, in an all-optical setting. Several configurations were proposed to produce and accelerate positrons in a…
The cascaded production and dynamics of electron-positron plasma in ultimately focused laser fields of extreme intensity are studied by 3D particle-in-cell simulations with the account for the relevant processes of quantum electrodynamics…
The vast majority of QED results are obtained in relatively weak fields and so in the framework of perturbation theory. However, forthcoming laser facilities providing extremely high fields can be used to enter not-yet-studied regimes.…
Using three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations, we further investigate the electron and ion acceleration from femtosecond laser-plasma peeler scheme which was proposed in our recent paper (Shen et al 2021 Phys. Rev. X 11 041002). In…
The direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons in underdense plasmas can provide 100s of nC of electrons accelerated to near-GeV energies using currently available lasers. Here we demonstrate the key role of electron transverse…
Ongoing progress in laser and accelerator technology opens new possibilities in high-field science, notably to investigate the largely unexplored strong-field quantum electrodynamics (SFQED) regime where electron-positron pairs can be…
We propose a scheme to explore regimes of strong-field Quantum Electrodynamics (SF-QED) otherwise unattainable with the currently available laser technology. The scheme relies on relativistic plasma mirrors curved by radiation pressure to…
We investigate how next-generation laser pulses at 10 PW $-$ 200 PW interact with a solid target in the presence of a relativistically underdense preplasma produced by amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). Laser hole boring and relativistic…
In simulations of a 12.5PW laser (focused intensity I = 4x10^23W/cm^2) striking a solid aluminium target 10% of the laser energy is converted to gamma-rays. A dense electron-positron plasma is generated with a maximum density of 10^26/m^3;…
In simulations of a 10PW laser striking a solid we demonstrate the possibility of producing a pure electron-positron plasma by the same processes as those thought to operate in high-energy astrophysical environments. A maximum positron…
We discovered a simple regime where a near-critical plasma irradiated by a laser of experimentally available intensity can self-organize to produce positrons and accelerate them to ultra-relativistic energies. The laser pulse piles up…
It is conjectured that all perturbative approaches to quantum electrodynamics (QED) break down in the collision of a high-energy electron beam with an intense laser, when the laser fields are boosted to `supercritical' strengths far greater…
Quasi-phase matched direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons can be realized with guided, radially polarized laser pulses in density-modulated plasma waveguides. A 3-D particle-in-cell model has been developed to describe the…