학술논문
Probing strong-field QED in beam-plasma collisions
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Matheron, A.; Claveria, P. San Miguel; Ariniello, R.; Ekerfelt, H.; Fiuza, F.; Gessner, S.; Gilljohann, M. F.; Hogan, M. J.; Keitel, C. H.; Knetsch, A.; Litos, M.; Mankovska, Y.; Montefiori, S.; Nie, Z.; O'Shea, B.; Peterson, J. R.; Storey, D.; Wu, Y.; Xu, X.; Zakharova, V.; Davoine, X.; Gremillet, L.; Tamburini, M.; Corde, S.
Source
Commun. Phys. 6, 141 (2023)
Subject
Language
Abstract
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 created directly from light-matter or even light-vacuum interactions. Laserless strategies such as beam-beam collisions have also been proposed to access the nonperturbative limit of SFQED. Here we report on a concept to probe SFQED by harnessing the interaction between a high-charge, ultrarelativistic electron beam and a solid conducting target. When impinging onto the target surface, the beam self fields are reflected, partly or fully, depending on the beam shape; in the rest frame of the beam electrons, these fields can exceed the Schwinger field, thus triggering SFQED effects such as quantum nonlinear inverse Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler electron-positron pair creation. Through reduced modeling and kinetic numerical simulations, we show that this single-beam setup can achieve interaction conditions similar to those envisioned in beam-beam collisions, but in a simpler and more controllable way owing to the automatic overlap of the beam and driving fields. This scheme thus eases the way to precision studies of SFQED and is also a promising milestone towards laserless studies of nonperturbative SFQED.