Speaker
Prof.
John Kirk
(MPI Kernphysik)
Description
Current high intensity laser facilities can be used to reach the
regime in which electron trajectories are strongly modified by
the quantum equivalent of the radiation reaction force. We describe a
Monte-Carlo simulation of a set-up in this regime and present results in which GeV electrons counter-propagate into a 10^{22} W/sq cm laser pulse. These show that the stochastic nature of quantum synchrotron
emission results in many more high energy photons than expected
from a purely classical calculation, and that electron-positron
pair production by an analog of the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process should be observable.
Primary author
Prof.
John Kirk
(MPI Kernphysik)
Co-authors
Dr
Chris Ridgers
(Dept of Physics, University of York)
Mr
Tom Blackburn
(Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University)
Prof.
Tony Bell
(Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford)
