High power laser-driven dense GeV e-e+ pairs production

Prof. Tongpu Yu

Visiting Professor at University of Strathclyde

The Breit-Wheeler (BW) process can be triggered by high power lasers. However, the straightforward laser-laser colliding for copious numbers of pair creation requires light intensities several orders of magnitude higher than possible with the ongoing laser facilities. Despite the numerous proposed approaches, creating high-energy-density pair plasmas in laboratories is still challenging. Here we present an all-optical scheme for overdense pair production by two counter-propagating lasers irradiating near-critical-density plasmas at only 1022W/cm2. In this scheme, bright ɣ-rays are generated by radiation trapped electrons oscillating in the laser fields. The dense ɣ -photons then collide with the focused counter-propagating lasers to initiate the multi-photon Breit-Wheeler process. Full three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations with QED incorporated indicate that one may generate a high-yield (1.05×1011) overdense (4×1022 cm3) GeV positron beam using 10 PW scale lasers. Such a bright pair source has many practical applications and could be basis for future compact high-luminosity electron-positron colliders.

 

References

[1] X.L. Zhu, T.P. Yu, et al., Nat. Commun. 7, 13686 (2016)

[2] X.L. Zhu, Y. Yin, T.P. Yu, et al., New J. Phys. 17, 053039 (2015)

[3] H.Z. Li, T.P. Yu, et al., submitted, (2017)

Slides of this talk will be available soon.