Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme

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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 21: Laser Plasmas - Poster

P 21.4: Poster

Wednesday, March 7, 2018, 16:15–18:15, Zelt West

QED cascades in the collision of two ultra-intense laser pulses — •Archana Sampath, Matteo Tamburini, and Christoph H. Keitel — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

QED cascades are complex avalanche processes of electron-positron and hard photon creation driven by ultra-strong electromagnetic fields. They play a fundamental role in astrophysical environments such as the magnetosphere of pulsars, rendering an earth-based implementation with intense lasers attractive. A number of analytical and numerical studies has been performed to investigate the onset and development of QED cascades as a function of the laser intensity in the collision of two counter-propagating laser pulses [1]. However, it has been recently demonstrated that the onset of QED cascades is also strongly influenced by the shape of the laser pulses, such as the laser pulse waist radius [2], even at intensities around 10²⁶ W/cm². In this work we investigate the effect on the onset of QED cascades of: (a) the laser pulse duration, (b) the presence of a relative delay for the peak of the laser pulses to reach the focus, (c) the existence of a mismatch between the laser focal axis of the two laser pulses.

[1] A. Di Piazza et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 84, 1177 (2012).

[2] M. Tamburini et al., Sci. Rep. 7, 5694 (2017).