Abstract
QED perturbation theory in a background field has been conjectured to break down for sufficiently high field intensity. The high-intensity behavior of a field theory is however intertwined with its high-energy (UV) behavior. Here we show that a UV modification of QED changes the high-intensity behaviour of observables. Specifically we study non-linear Compton scattering in a constant crossed field in QED with an additional Pauli term. In the UV modified theory the cross section exhibits a faster power-law scaling with intensity than in ordinary QED.
Highlights
Strong electromagnetic fields can be realized using modern intense lasers [1,2], made possible through chirped pulse amplification [3]
A crude model for strong laser fields is a background constant crossed field (CCF) with vanishing field invariants, S ≡ E2 − B2 1⁄4 0 and P ≡ E · B 1⁄4 0, “null.” While this may seem a peculiar choice, it has been argued that any field configuration will appear as a CCF to a probe of sufficiently high energy [4] Given a probe, one can construct a nonvanishing invariant χ, which is, roughly, the product of probe energy and CCF field strength; for an electron, χ 1⁄4 FÃ=ES, that is the electric field FÃ seen by the electron in its rest frame, in units of the Sauter-Schwinger field strength, ES 1⁄4 m2=e [8,9]
We focus on a particular scattering process, namely nonlinear Compton scattering [4,39,40,41,42], in a CCF background, as this is the case to which the NR conjecture most concretely applies
Summary
Strong electromagnetic fields can be realized using modern intense lasers [1,2], made possible through chirped pulse amplification [3]. This is clear, as high intensities accelerate particles to high energies, but quantum mechanically the issue can be more subtle It has been argued [21] that in strong electric fields E, so S > 0, the electron propagator becomes localized at an “electric length” scale of order lE ≡ 1=ðeEÞ1=2, so that the argument of the strong-field logarithm is the ratio lE=ƛe, ƛe being the Compton length.
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