Bulletin of the American Physical Society
64th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics
Volume 67, Number 15
Monday–Friday, October 17–21, 2022; Spokane, Washington
Session TM09: Mini-Conference: Relativistic Plasma Physics in Supercritical Fields ILive Streamed
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Chair: Stepan Bulanov, LBL Room: 206 AB |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 9:30AM - 9:48AM |
TM09.00001: Introduction Talk Alec G.R. Thomas . |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 9:48AM - 10:06AM |
TM09.00002: BELLA PW Laser Facility Upgrades Enabling High Field Physics Research Lieselotte Obst-Huebl, Marlene Turner, Kei Nakamura, Anthony J Gonsalves, Sahel Hakimi, Stepan Bulanov, Carlo Benedetti, Cameron R Geddes, Axel Huebl, Tobias Ostermayr, Thomas Schenkel, Carl B Schroeder, Csaba Toth, Jeroen van Tilborg, Jean-Luc Vay, Eric H Esarey Recent upgrades at the BELLA PW laser system enable frontier capabilities in High Energy Physics (HEP) and High Energy Density Science (HEDS). Furthermore, strong field quantum electrodynamics (SFQED) effects are expected to increasingly manifest themselves in laser-charged particle interactions with PW – 10 PW laser systems. Such regimes could become accessed in well prepared experiments at the BELLA PW with its recently added beamlines. The new second beamline allows to combine two independently tunable laser pulses at variable energy ratios, with a combined peak pulse power of 1 PW, for staged laser-particle acceleration and various laser or particle pulse collision scenarios. The new high-intensity iP2 beamline provides a focal spot of ~3 μm diameter, resulting in on-target peak intensities of > 5×1021 W/cm2, an intensity regime where advanced ion acceleration could already be accompanied by detectable SFQED effects, such as gamma ray flashes. The high laser pulse repetition rate capability (up to 1 Hz) allows for the collection of large data sets, enabling adequate statistical analysis of the results. The iP2 beamline is accessible to users through LaserNetUS. We will discuss the new BELLA PW facility capabilities and present initial examples of proposed SFQED studies. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 10:06AM - 10:24AM |
TM09.00003: LUXE: A new experiment to study non-perturbative QED in electron-laser and photon-laser collisions Tom G Blackburn The LUXE experiment (Laser Und XFEL Experiment) is an experiment in planning at DESY Hamburg using the electron beam of the European XFEL. LUXE is intended to study collisions between a high-intensity optical laser pulse and 16.5 GeV electrons from the XFEL electron beam, as well as collisions between the laser pulse and high-energy secondary photons. This will elucidate quantum electrodynamics (QED) at the strong-field frontier, where the electromagnetic field of the laser is above the Schwinger limit. In this regime, QED is non-perturbative. This manifests itself in the creation of physical electron-positron pairs from the QED vacuum, similar to Hawking radiation from black holes. LUXE intends to measure the positron production rate in an unprecedented laser intensity regime. The experiment has received a stage 0 critical approvement (CD0) from the DESY management and is in the process of preparing its technical design report (TDR). It is expected to start running in 2024/5. An overview of the LUXE experimental setup and its challenges and progress will be given, along with a discussion of the expected physics reach in the context of testing QED in the non-perturbative regime. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 10:24AM - 10:42AM |
TM09.00004: Extreme field physics and the 10/100 PW lasers at SIOM Liangliang Ji, Zhigang Bu, Yitong Wu, Xuesong Geng, Baifei Shen, Ruxin Li The 10PW laser facility (SULF) is now in the commissioning phase and an 100PW laser station (SEL) is being built on the hard x-ray free electron laser facility (SHINE) in Shanghai. These facilities not only provide light intensities in the range of 10^21-23 W/cm^2 but also the opportunity to integrate the most powerful light sources in the optical and x-ray regimes. In this presentation, I will introduce the status of both facilities, including some primary results on laser-proton acceleration in SULF and recent progress & science cases of SEL, which mainly focuses on strong-field QED phenomena and high energy density physics. In additional, our recent theoretical and simulation work will also be discussed, on the spin related dynamics in extreme laser fields, the quantum vortex effect in QED scattering processes and so on. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 10:42AM - 11:00AM |
TM09.00005: Ponderomotive electron scattering from high-intensity laser pulses Andrew M Longman, Wendell T Hill, Robert Fedosejevs, Luis Roso, Smrithan Ravichandran, Nathan McLane, Lili Manzo, Roberto Lera Matellanes, Marine Huault, Calvin Z He, German Tiscareno, David Hanggi, Pedro Spingola, Nicholas Czapla, Rebecca L Daskalova With the increasing number of petawatt laser systems being developed worldwide, and laser intensities now surpassing the 1E23W/cm^2 barrier, we are entering a new regime of laser-plasma interactions. However, a direct measurement of these extreme laser intensities has yet to be made and is currently only inferred from indirect methods. An open question remains: how can we determine directly the peak intensity of a high-power, high-intensity laser system? |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 11:00AM - 11:18AM |
TM09.00006: Formation of GeV-level collimated linear Breit-Wheeler positron beams by experimentally available laser pulses and targets Yutong He, Thomas G Blackburn, Toma Toncian, Alexey Arefiev Motivated by the experimental capability of newly constructed laser facilities and the developments in target fabrication, it has been previously shown [Comm. Phys. 4, 139 (2021)], by using a post-processing algorithm, that over 108 electron-positron pairs can be created by the linear Breit-Wheeler (BW) process by two laser pulses with the intensity of the order of 1022 W/cm2 colliding inside a structured plasma channel. However, the dynamics of these created linear BW positrons is yet to be examined. By using a random pairing method, we have successfully implemented the linear BW process into the particle-in-cell code EPOCH. From the numerical simulations, we found that the linear BW positrons can be accelerated by the remaining laser pulses to GeV-level energies, and confined by the azimuthal plasma magnetic fields to form collimated energetic positron beams. The formation of such linear BW positron beams is likely to facilitate the experimental observation of the linear BW positrons, and also indicates that such an experimental setup has the potential to serve as energetic positron source in future experiments. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 11:18AM - 11:36AM |
TM09.00007: All-optical nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production using gamma-flash photons Alexander J Macleod, Prokopis Hadjisolomou, Tae Moon Jeong, Sergei V Bulanov Modern multi-PW laser technology will allow fundamental strong-field quantum electrodynamics processes to be extensively studied in the lab over the coming years. One of the key effects to be explored is the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler (BW) process: the conversion of high-energy photons into electron-positron pairs through the interaction with a high-power laser. A major challenge to observing the BW effect is first producing large numbers of high-energy gamma photons. In this work we outline a proposal to source these photons through a simple, highly efficient, all-optical setup by irradiating thin solid targets with a high-power laser to produce a so-called "gamma-flash". We consider the collision of these photons with a secondary laser, and systematically discuss the prospects for exploring the BW process at current and next-generation high-power laser facilities. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 11:36AM - 11:54AM |
TM09.00008: Optimization of positron acceleration by multi-PW laser pulses in plasma channels via particle-in-cell simulations Dominika Maslarova, Bertrand Martinez, Marija Vranic Positron acceleration in plasmas has gained great interest due to its promising future applications, such as multi-TeV electron-positron collider [1]. Self-generated fields in electron-evacuated plasma structures are, however, usually not well-suited for the positron focusing and guiding for on-axis propagation. Here, we study the direct acceleration of positrons in a plasma channel by next-generation multi-PW laser pulses, examined by means of quasi-3D particle-in-cell simulation with the OSIRIS framework. The positrons are created in the collision of the same laser pulse with an electron beam [2]. We study the conditions favorable for positron injection into the channel. We show that focusing challenges can be overcome due to the radiation reaction force and electron beam loading. Moreover, the beam charge is robust with respect to the small variations in plasma radius. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 11:54AM - 12:12PM |
TM09.00009: Nonlinear Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production including the damping of particle states Tobias Podszus, Victor Dinu, Antonino Di Piazza In the presence of an electromagnetic background plane-wave field, electron, positron, and photon states are not stable, because electrons and positrons emit photons and photons decay into electron-positron pairs. This decay of the particle states leads to an exponential damping term in the probabilities of single nonlinear Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production. We present analytical and numerical investigations for the probabilities of nonlinear Compton scattering and nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production including the particle states decay. For this we first give new spin- and polarization-resolved expressions of the probabilities, verify that they are gauge invariant, provide some of their asymptotic behaviors, and show that the results of the total probabilities are independent of the spin and polarization bases. In plots from numerical computations we observe that it is crucial to take into account the damping of the states in order the probabilities to stay always below unity and we show that the damping factors also scale with the pulse duration of the background field. In the case of nonlinear Compton scattering we show numerically that the total probability behaves like a Poissonian distribution for sufficiently low initial electron energies such that the photon recoil is negligible. In all considered cases, the final particles momentum transverse to the propagation direction of the plane wave is always much smaller than the particles energies and the main spread of the momentum on the transverse plane is along the direction of the plane-wave electric field. |
Thursday, October 20, 2022 12:12PM - 12:30PM |
TM09.00010: Electron-positron pair production by linear Breit-Wheeler process in ultra-short petawatt laser-plasma interaction Kaoru Sugimoto, Natsumi Iwata, Takayoshi Sano, Yasuhiko Sentoku In this work, we have demonstrated with a help of particle-in-cell simulations that an ultra-short petawatt laser light self-organizes a photon collider in a near critical over-dense plasma and produces a large number of positrons via the linear Breit-Wheeler (BW) process. An ultra-intense laser pulse propagates in an over dense plasma by its relativistic transparency with forming a magnetic channel structure and accumulating electrons in front of the pulse. In the magnetic channel, the laser light drives relativistic electrons and induces collimated gamma-ray photons via synchrotron radiation. While at the pulse front electrons are accelerated backward with relativistic energies by an electrostatic field induced by the electron accumulation. The relativistic electrons moving backward emit photons when they collide the laser pulse. These photons collide with the gamma-ray photons and induce electron-positron pairs via the BW process. We also found that the generated positrons are accelerated by the electrostatic field to GeV energy with a narrow divergence of ±10 degrees. In the talk, we’ll report the physics of the collider formation and details of the simulation results. |
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