Bright polarised x-ray flashes from dense plasmas

Authors:
Open Access
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Creating a plasma dominated by strong-field QED (SFQED) effects is a major goal of new multi-PW laser facilities. This is motivated by the fact that the fundamental dynamics of such plasmas are poorly understood and play an important role in the electrodynamics of extreme astrophysical environments such as pulsar magnetospheres. The most obvious observable for which such a regime has been reached is the production of a bright flash of X-rays, but distinguishing this from hard X-rays induced by bremsstrahlung radiation is a major challenge. Here we show that the photons from the X-ray flash are highly polarised relative to the unpolarised background, indicating that the SFQED plasma has indeed been produced. For a laser of intensity >10^{21} Wcm^{-2} impinging on a solid Al target, the photons of the flash with energy >10 keV are >65% polarised. ‡ Note that the hard photons are often referred to as gamma-rays for photon energies > 1 MeV. We will refer to all hard photons as X-rays for simplicity. This is because we consider hard photons with 1-100 keV energies as well as those above 1 MeV.
Funding Information
  • National Science Foundation (2108075)
  • National Science Foundation (2137603)
  • National Science Foundation (2138259)
  • National Science Foundation (2138286)
  • National Science Foundation (2138296)
  • National Science Foundation (2138307)
  • National Science Foundation (2206059)
  • National Science Foundation (ACI-1339893)
  • Grantová Agentura České Republiky (22-42963L)
  • Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (CEECIND/04050/2021)
  • Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/FISPLA/3800/2021)
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/V049461/1)

This publication has 64 references indexed in Scilit: