Symmetries in nonlinear Bethe-Heitler process

Nonlinear Bethe-Heitler process in a bichromatic laser field is investigated using strong-field QED formalism. Symmetry properties of angular distributions of created $e^-e^+$ pairs are analyzed. These properties are showed to be governed by a behavior of the vector potential characterizing the laser field, rather than by the respective electric field component.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Polarization of the electron and positron produced in combined Coulomb and strong laser fields

The process of $e^+e^-$ production in the superposition of a Coulomb and a strong laser field is considered. The pair production rate integrated over the momentum and summed over the spin projections of one of the particles is derived exactly in the parameters of the laser field and in the Born approximation with respect to the Coulomb field. The case of a monochromatic circularly polarized laser field is considered in detail. A very compact analytical expression of the pair production rate and its dependence on the polarization of one of the created particles is obtained in the quasiclassical approximation for the experimentally relevant case of an undercritical laser field. As a result, the polarization of the created electron (positron) is derived.Comment: 16 pages, no figure

Quantum effects with an X-ray free electron laser

A quantum kinetic equation coupled with Maxwell's equation is used to estimate the laser power required at an XFEL facility to expose intrinsically quantum effects in the process of QED vacuum decay via spontaneous pair production. A 9 TW-peak XFEL laser with photon energy 8.3 keV could be sufficient to initiate particle accumulation and the consequent formation of a plasma of spontaneously produced pairs. The evolution of the particle number in the plasma will exhibit non-Markovian aspects of the strong-field pair production process and the plasma's internal currents will generate an electric field whose interference with that of the laser leads to plasma oscillations.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX2

Trapped fermions with density imbalance in the BEC limit

We analyze the effects of imbalancing the populations of two-component trapped fermions, in the BEC limit of the attractive interaction between different fermions. Starting from the gap equation with two fermionic chemical potentials, we derive a set of coupled equations that describe composite bosons and excess fermions. We include in these equations the processes leading to the correct dimer-dimer and dimer-fermion scattering lengths. The coupled equations are then solved in the Thomas-Fermi approximation to obtain the density profiles for composite bosons and excess fermions, which are relevant to the recent experiments with trapped fermionic atomsComment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Gapless Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov Approximation for Bose Gases

A dilute Bose system with Bose-Einstein condensate is considered. It is shown that the Hartree-Fock-Bogolubov approximation can be made both conserving as well as gapless. This is achieved by taking into account all physical normalization conditions, that is, the normalization condition for the condensed particles and that for the total number of particles. Two Lagrange multipliers, introduced for preserving these normalization conditions, make the consideration completely self-consistent.Comment: Latex file, 22 pages, 2 figure

The Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses

Particle production due to external fields (electric, chromo-electric or gravitational) requires evolving an initial state through an interaction with a time-dependent background, with the rate being computed from a Bogoliubov transformation between the in and out vacua. When the background fields have temporal profiles with sub-structure, a semiclassical analysis of this problem confronts the full subtlety of the Stokes phenomenon: WKB solutions are only local, while the production rate requires global information. Incorporating the Stokes phenomenon, we give a simple quantitative explanation of the recently computed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 150404 (2009)] oscillatory momentum spectrum of e+e- pairs produced from vacuum subjected to a time-dependent electric field with sub-cycle laser pulse structure. This approach also explains naturally why for spinor and scalar QED these oscillations are out of phase.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figs.; v2 sign typo corrected, version to appear in PR