Fully polarized Compton scattering in plane waves and its polarization transfer

Fully polarized Compton scattering from a beam of spin-polarized electrons is investigated in plane-wave backgrounds in a broad intensity region from the perturbative to the nonperturbative regimes.In the perturbative regime,polarized linear Compton scattering is considered for investigating polarization transfer from a single laser photon to a scattered photon,and in the high-intensity region,the polarized locally monochromatic approximation and locally constant field approximation are established and are employed to study polarization transfer from an incoming electron to a scattered photon.The numerical results suggest an appreciable improvement of about 10%in the scattering probability in the intermediate-intensity region if the electron’s longitudinal spin is parallel to the laser rotation.The longitudinal spin of the incoming electron can be transferred to the scattered photon with an efficiency that increases with laser intensity and collisional energy.For collision between an optical laser with frequency1 eV and a 10 GeV electron,this polarization transfer efficiency can increase from about 20%in the perturbative regime to about 50%in the nonperturbative regime for scattered photons with relatively high energy.

Electron-positron pair production in ultrastrong laser fields

Electronepositron pair production due to the decay of vacuum in ultrastrong laser fields is an interesting topic which is revived recently because of the rapid development of current laser technology.The theoretical and numerical research progress of this challenging topic is reviewed.Many new findings are presented by different approaches such as the worldline instantons,the S-matrix theory,the kinetic method by solving the quantum Vlasov equation or/and the real-time DiraceHeisenbergeWigner formalism,the computational quantum field theory by solving the Dirac equation and so on.In particular,the effects of electric field polarizations on pair production are unveiled with different patterns of created momentum spectra.The effects of polarizations on the number density of created particles and the nonperturbative signatures of multiphoton process are also presented.The competitive interplay between the multiphoton process and nonperturbation process plays a key role in these new findings.These newly discovered phenomena are valuable to deepen the understanding of pair production in complex fields and even have an implication to the study of strong-field ionization.More recent studies on the pair production in complex fields as well as beyond laser fields are briefly presented in the view point of perspective future.

Brightγ-ray source with large orbital angular momentum from the laser near-criticalplasma interaction

We propose a new laser-plasma-based method to generate brightγ-rays carrying large orbital angular momentum by interacting a circularly polarized Laguerre–Gaussian laser pulse with a near-critical hydrogen plasma conflned in an over-dense solid tube.In the flrst stage of the interaction,it is found via fully relativistic three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that high-energy helical electron beams with large orbital angular momentum are generated.In the second stage,this electron beam interacts with the laser pulse reflected from the plasma disc behind the solid tube,and helicalγbeams are generated with the same topological structure as the electron beams.The results show that the electrons receive angular momentum from the drive laser,which can be further transferred to theγphotons during the interaction.Theγbeam orbital angular momentum is strongly dependent on the laser topological charge l and laser intensity a_(0),which scales as L_(γ)∝a_(0)~4.A short(duration of 5 fs)isolated helicalγbeam with an angular momentum of-3.3×10^(-14)kg m~2 s^(-1)is generated using the Laguerre–Gaussian laser pulse with l=2.The peak brightness of the helicalγbeam reaches 1.22×10^(24)photons s^(-1)mm^(-2)mrad^(-2)per 0.1%BW(at 10 Me V),and the laser-to-γ-ray angular momentum conversion rate is approximately 2.1%.