Studying QED processes with laser wakefield accelerators
by
Stuart PD Mangles(John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science, Imperial College London)
→
Europe/London
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https://indico.stfc.ac.uk/event/198/
Description
The laser wakefield accelerator driven by the Gemini laser at RAL produces GeV electron beams from a plasma accelerator just 1 cm long. I will discuss how we are now using these beams to study some interesting phenomena in Quantum Electrodynamics.
We are investigating photon-photon scattering by using the electron beam to generate gamma rays and colliding these with the X ray field generated by a laser heated plasma. We are using this platform to study inelastic scattering where two photons collide to produce an electron-positron pair (the “two photon” Breit Wheeler process) and eventually hope to study elastic scattering of light by light.
We are also investigating the physics that occurs when the electromagnetic field strength becomes close to the critical field of QED by colliding the electron beam with a second intense laser pulse. We are studying strong field radiation reaction and eventually hope to investigate the “non-linear” Breit Wheeler process, where a high energy photon generated in the collision interacts with the laser field to produce electron-positron pairs.