Quantum Mechanisms of Electron and Positron Acceleration through Nonlinear Compton Scatterings and Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler Processes in Coherent Photon Dominated Regime

Bo Zhang,Weimin Zhou,Yuqiu Gu,Shu-Kai He,Jian Teng,Zhi-Gang Deng,Zhimeng Zhang,Wei Hong

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-55472-5

Abstract

Electric force is presently the only means in laboratory to accelerate charged particles to high energies, corresponding acceleration processes are classical and continuous. Here we report on how to accelerate electrons and positrons to high energies using ultra intense lasers (UIL) through two quantum processes, nonlinear Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process. In the coherent photon dominated regime of these two processes, the former can effectively boost electrons/positrons and the latter can produce high energy electrons and positrons with low energy γ photons. The energy needed for such quantum acceleration (QA) is transferred from large numbers of coherent laser photons through the two quantum processes. QA also collimate the generated high energy electrons and positrons along the laser axis and the effective acceleration distance is of microscopic dimensions. Proof of principle QA experiment can be performed on 100 petawatt (PW) scale lasers which are in building or planning.

Highlights

In contrast to these classical and continuous acceleration methods based on electric force, quantum processes, e.g., binary scatterings, appear hardly suitable for particle acceleration
Since the energy of coherent laser photons involved in Quantum Acceleration through Nonlinear Compton Scattering (QANCS) has a wide distribution, a single QANCS does not always transfer a very high energy to the electron
A very important difference from QANCS is that, the energy of laser photons n′k0 involved in a single Quantum Acceleration through Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process (QANBW) and the energies of created e− and e+ have a lower bound as shown in Fig. 5(a), where Wγ ∈ [0, 1] is the normalized accumulated probability of nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process (NBW) which has similar definition to Eq (6)

Summary

Introduction

In contrast to these classical and continuous acceleration methods based on electric force, quantum processes, e.g., binary scatterings, appear hardly suitable for particle acceleration. As will be presented in this paper, there are two methods to accelerate electrons and positrons to high energies through quantum processes with UILs, Quantum Acceleration through Nonlinear Compton Scattering (QANCS)

Results

Conclusion