Theoretical investigation of the highly nonlinear regime of quantum electrodynamics using laser-matter and laser-plasma interactions
Final Report Abstract
This DFG Research Fellowship enabled the following activities, which were carried out in the research group of Nathaniel J. Fisch at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences in Princeton: The originally proposed research, in particular the investigation of “novel types of experiments which could probe the interplay between plasma physics and highly nonlinear QED processes”: We demonstrated that the “QED plasma regime” could be reached by colliding dense electron beams with ultra high-intensity laser pulses and suggested a novel experimental observable (frequency upconversion), which results in an unambigious signature of the interplay between collective plasma and strong-field quantum effects. Recently, this work resulted in a white paper, which proposes to carry out such experiments at SLAC. We found that super-critical electromagnetic fields far beyond the Schwinger limit can be probed by colliding very dense electron beams. This novel experimental scheme facilitates the investigation of a qualitatively different regime of QED, where radiative corrections are no longer perturbatively suppressed. By colliding sufficiently long bunches, the same setup produces extremely dense electron-positron pair plasmas via a QED cascade. Notably, the collision of very short bunches enables a new beamstrahlung mitigation strategy, which could disrupt our approach to future high-energy lepton collider like CLIC or ILC. Recently, this work stimulated a series of five Letters of Interest, which were submitted to the 2021 snowmass process. We showed that in the supercritical quantum regime the photon spectrum develops a peak which can be utilized for producing high-energy gamma photons for a future gamma-gamma collider. This peak disappears as soon as a single lepton emits multiple photons during the interaction. To mitigate the degradation of the photon spectrum we proposed a scheme based on asymmetric beam-beam collisions with a finite impact parameter. The organization of workshops and conferences helped to build an international community, with a focus on LINAC-based SFQED experiments.
Publications
- Implementing nonlinear Compton scattering beyond the local-constant-field approximation, Phys. Rev. A 98, 012134 (2018)
A. Di Piazza, M. Tamburini, SM, and C. H. Keitel
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.012134) - Are we ready to transfer optical light to gamma-rays? Phys. Plasmas 26, 053103 (2019)
M. Vranic, T. Grismayer, SM, R. A. Fonseca, and L. O. Silva
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5090992) - Improved local-constant-field approximation for strong-field QED codes, Phys. Rev. A 99, 022125 (2019)
A. Di Piazza, M. Tamburini, SM, and C. H. Keitel
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.99.022125) - Prospect of Studying Nonperturbative QED with Beam-Beam Collisions, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 190404 (2019)
V. Yakimenko, SM, F. Del Gaudio, C. Baumann, A. Fedotov, F. Fiuza, T. Grismayer, M. J. Hogan, A. Pukhov, L. O. Silva, and G. White
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.190404) - Resummation of QED radiative corrections in a strong constant crossed field, Phys. Rev. D 102, 053005 (2020)
A. A. Mironov, SM, and A. M. Fedotov
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.102.053005)
