Search

The process of turning a proton into a neutron, positron and electron-neutrino in a strong plane-wave electromagnetic field is studied. This process is forbidden in vacuum and is seen to feature an exponential suppression factor which is non-perturbative in the field amplitude. The suppression is alleviated when the proton experiences a field strength of about ten times the Schwinger critical field in its rest frame or larger. Around this threshold the lifetime of the proton, in its rest frame, is comparable to the conventional neutron decay lifetime. As the field strength is increased, the proton lifetime becomes increasingly short. We investigate possible scenarios where this process may be observed in the laboratory using an ultra-intense laser and a high-energy proton beam with the conclusion, however, that it would be very challenging to observe this effect in the near future., Comment: 22 pages, 2 figures. To appear in the Focus issue "Strong Field Quantum Electrodynamics with high power lasers and particle beams" of New Journal of Physics

In this paper we show how to recast the results of the semiclassical method of Baier, Katkov & Strakhovenko for pair production, including the possibility of specifying all the spin states and photon polarization, in a form that is suitable for numerical implementation. In this case, a new type of integral appears in addition to the ones required for the radiation emission process. We compare the resulting formulas with those obtained for a short pulse plane wave external field by using the Volkov state. We investigate the applicability of the local constant field approximation for the proposed upcoming experiments at FACET II at SLAC and LUXE at DESY. Finally, we provide results on the dependence of the pair production rate on the relative polarization between a linearly polarized laser pulse and a linearly polarized incoming high energy photon. We observe that even in the somewhat intermediate intensity regime of these experiments, there is roughly a factor of $2$ difference between the pair production rates corresponding to the two relative photon polarizations, which is of interest in light of the vacuum birefringence of QED.

We investigate the 2nd order process of two photons being emitted by a high-energy electron dressed in the strong background electric field found between the planes in a crystal. The strong crystalline field combined with ultra relativistic electrons is one of very few cases where the Schwinger field can be experimentally achieved in the electron's rest frame. The radiation being emitted, the so-called channeling radiation, is a well studied phenomenon. However only the first order diagram corresponding to emission of a single photon has been studied so far. We elaborate on how the 2 photon emission process should be understood in terms of a two-step versus a one-step process, i.e., if one can consider one photon being emitted after the other, or if there is also a contribution where the two photons are emitted 'simultaneously'. From the calculated full probability we see that the two-step contribution is simply the product of probabilities for single photon emission while the additional one-step terms are, mainly, interferences due to several possible intermediate virtual states. These terms can contribute significantly when the crystal is thin. Therefore, in addition, we see how one can, for a thick crystal, calculate multiple photon emissions quickly by neglecting the one-step terms, which represents a solution of the problem of quantum radiation reaction in a crystal beyond the usually applied constant field approximation. We explicitly calculate an example of 180 GeV electrons in a thin Silicon crystal and argue why it is, for experimental reasons, more feasible to see the one-step contribution in a crystal experiment than in a laser experiment.

Approximate solutions of the Dirac equation are found for ultrarelativistic particles moving in a periodic potential, which depends only on one coordinate, transverse to the largest component of the momentum of the incoming particle. As an example we employ these solutions to calculate the radiation emission of positrons and electrons trapped in the planar potential found between the (110) planes in Silicon. This allows us to compare with the semi-classical method of Baier, Katkov and Strakhovenko, which includes the effect of spin and photon recoil, but neglects the quantization of the transverse motion. For high-energy electrons, the high-energy part of the angularly integrated photon energy spectrum calculated with the found wave functions differs from the corresponding one calculated with the semi-classical method. However, for lower particle energies it is found that the angularly integrated emission energy spectra obtained via the semi-classical method is in fairly good agreement with the full quantum calculation except that the positions of the harmonic peaks in photon energy and the photon emission angles are shifted.

We investigate the radiation emitted by an ultrarelativistic electron traveling in a 1-dimensional parabolic potential. Having in mind a simplified model for beamstrahlung, we consider the realistic case of the electron motion being highly directional, with the transverse momentum being much smaller than the longitudinal one. In this case we can find solutions of the Dirac equation and we calculate exactly the radiation emission using first-order perturbation theory. We compare the results obtained to that obtained via the semi-classical method of Baier and Katkov which includes quantum effects due to photon recoil in the radiation emission but ignores the quantum nature of the electron motion. On the one hand, we confirm a prediction of the semi-classical method that the emission spectrum should coincide with that in the case of a linearly polarized monochromatic wave. On the other hand, however, we find that the semi-classical method does not yield the exact result when the quantum number describing the transverse motion becomes small. In this way, we address quantitatively the problem of the limits of validity of the semi-classical method, which is known, generally speaking, to be applicable for large quantum numbers. Finally, we also discuss which beam conditions would be necessary to enter the studied regime where also the motion of the particles must be considered quantum mechanically to yield the correct spectrum.

Radiation reaction is the influence of the electromagnetic field emitted by a charged particle on the dynamics of the particle itself. Here we report experimental radiation emission spectra from ultrarelativistic positrons in silicon in a regime where both quantum and radiation-reaction effects dominate the dynamics of the positrons. We found that each positron emits multiple photons with energy comparable to its own energy, revealing the importance of quantum photon recoil. Moreover, the shape of the emission spectra indicates that photon emissions occur in a nonlinear regime where positrons absorb several quanta from the crystal field. Our theoretical analysis shows that only a full quantum theory of radiation reaction is capable of explaining the experimental results, with radiation-reaction effects arising from the recoils undergone by the positrons during multiple photon emissions. This experiment is the first fundamental test of quantum electrodynamics in a new regime where the dynamics of charged particles is determined not only by the external electromagnetic fields but also by the radiation-field generated by the charges themselves. Future experiments carried out in the same line will be able to, in principle, also shed light on the fundamental question about the structure of the electromagnetic field close to elementary charges.

It is well-known that the Heisenberg-Euler-Schwinger effective Lagrangian predicts that a vacuum with a strong static electromagnetic field turns birefringent. We propose a scheme that can be implemented at the planned FCC-ee, to measure the nonlinear effect of vacuum birefringence in electrodynamics arising from QED corrections. Our scheme employs a pulsed laser to create Compton backscattered photons off a high energy electron beam, with the FCC-ee as a particularly interesting example. These photons will pass through a strong static magnetic field, which changes the state of polarization of the radiation - an effect proportional to the photon energy. This change will be measured by the use of an aligned single-crystal, where a large difference in the pair production cross-sections can be achieved. In the proposed experimental setup the birefringence effect gives rise to a difference in the number of pairs created in the analyzing crystal, stemming from the fact that the initial laser light has a varying state of polarization, achieved with a rotating quarter wave plate. Evidence for the vacuum birefringent effect will be seen as a distinct peak in the Fourier transform spectrum of the pair-production rate signal. This tell-tale signal can be significantly above background with only few hours of measurement, in particular at high energies., Comment: Presented by UIU at the International Symposium on "New Horizons in Fundamental Physics: From Neutrons Nuclei via Superheavy Elements and Supercritical Fields to Neutron Stars and Cosmic Rays," held to honor Walter Greiner on his 80th birthday at Makutsi Safari Farm, South Africa, November 23-29, 2015

This paper summarizes the physics potential of the CLIC high-energy e+e- linear collider. It provides input to the Snowmass 2013 process for the energy-frontier working groups on The Higgs Boson (HE1), Precision Study of Electroweak Interactions (HE2), Fully Understanding the Top Quark (HE3), as well as The Path Beyond the Standard Model -- New Particles, Forces, and Dimensions (HE4). It is accompanied by a paper describing the CLIC accelerator study, submitted to the Frontier Capabilities group of the Snowmass process., Comment: Updated the author list, updated Higgs results and small changes in the text of the Higgs section, updated results on composite Higgs bosons, added and updated references. Final submission for the Snowmass proceedings