29 research outputs found
Investigation of classical radiation reaction with aligned crystals
Classical radiation reaction is the effect of the electromagnetic field
emitted by an accelerated electric charge on the motion of the charge itself.
The self-consistent underlying classical equation of motion including
radiation-reaction effects, the Landau-Lifshitz equation, has never been tested
experimentally, in spite of the first theoretical treatments of radiation
reaction having been developed more than a century ago. Here we show that
classical radiation reaction effects, in particular those due to the near
electromagnetic field, as predicted by the Landau-Lifshitz equation, can be
measured in principle using presently available facilities, in the energy
emission spectrum of electrons crossing a
- thick diamond crystal in the axial channeling regime. Our
theoretical results indicate the feasibility of the suggested setup, e.g., at
the CERN Secondary Beam Areas (SBA) beamlines.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Numerical approach to the semiclassical method of radiation emission for arbitrary electron spin and photon polarization
We show how the semiclassical formulas for radiation emission of Baier,
Katkov and Strakhovenko for arbitrary initial and final spins of the electron
and arbitrary polarization of the emitted photon can be rewritten in a form
which numerically converges quickly. We directly compare the method in the case
of a background plane wave with the result obtained by using the Volkov state
solution of the Dirac equation, and confirm that we obtain the same result. We
then investigate the interaction of a circularly polarized short laser pulse
scattering with GeV electrons and see that the finite duration of the pulse
leads to a lower transfer of circular polarization than that predicted by the
known formulas in the monochromatic case. We also see how the transfer of
circular polarization from the laser beam to the gamma ray beam is gradually
deteriorated as the laser intensity increases, entering the nonlinear regime.
However, this is shown to be recovered if the scattered photon beam is
collimated to only allow for passage of photons emitted with angles smaller
than with respect to the initial electron direction, where
is the approximately constant Lorentz factor of the electron. The obtained
formulas also allow us to answer questions regarding radiative polarization of
the emitting particles. In this respect we briefly discuss an application of
the present approach to the case of a bent crystal and high-energy positrons
Testing Strong Field QED Close to the Fully Nonperturbative Regime Using Aligned Crystals
Processes occurring in the strong-field regime of QED are characterized by background electromagnetic fields of the order of the critical field in the rest frame of participating charges. It has been conjectured that if in their rest frame electrons/positrons experience field strengths of the order of , with being the fine-structure constant, their effective coupling with radiation becomes of the order of unity. Here we show that channeling radiation by ultrarelativistic electrons with energies of the order of a few TeV on thin tungsten crystals allows to test the predictions of QED close to this fully non-perturbative regime by measuring the angularly resolved single photon intensity spectrum. The proposed setup features the unique characteristics that essentially all electrons 1) undergo at most a single photon emission and 2) experience at the moment of emission and in the angular region of interest the maximum allowed value of the field strength, which at exceeds by more than two orders of magnitudes in their rest frame
Quantum radiation reaction in aligned crystals beyond the local constant field approximation
We report on experimental spectra of photons radiated by 50 GeV positrons crossing silicon single crystals of thicknesses 1.1 mm, 2.0 mm, 4.2 mm, and 6.2 mm at sufficiently small angles to the (110) planes that their motion effectively is governed by the continuum crystal potential. The experiment covers a new regime of interaction where each positron emits several hard photons, whose recoil are not negligible and which are formed on lengths where the variation of the crystal field cannot be ignored. As a result neither the single-photon semiclassical theory of Baier et al. nor the conventional cascade approach to multiple hard photon emissions (quantum radiation reaction) based on the local constant field approximation are able to reproduce the experimental results. After developing a theoretical scheme which incorporates the essential physical features of the experiments, i.e., multiple emissions, photon recoil and background field variation within the radiation formation length, we show that it provides results in convincing agreement with the data
Experimental investigation of the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect in low-Z targets
In the CERN NA63 collaboration we have addressed the question of the
potential inadequacy of the commonly used Migdal formulation of the
Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect by measuring the photon emission by 20
and 178 GeV electrons in the range 100 MeV - 4 GeV, in targets of
LowDensityPolyEthylene (LDPE), C, Al, Ti, Fe, Cu, Mo and, as a reference
target, Ta. For each target and energy, a comparison between simulated values
based on the LPM suppression of incoherent bremsstrahlung is shown, taking
multi-photon effects into account. For these targets and energies, we find that
Migdal's theoretical formulation is adequate to a precision of better than
about 5%, irrespective of the target substance.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure
Measurement of shower development and its Moli\`ere radius with a four-plane LumiCal test set-up
A prototype of a luminometer, designed for a future e+e- collider detector,
and consisting at present of a four-plane module, was tested in the CERN PS
accelerator T9 beam. The objective of this beam test was to demonstrate a
multi-plane tungsten/silicon operation, to study the development of the
electromagnetic shower and to compare it with MC simulations. The Moli\`ere
radius has been determined to be 24.0 +/- 0.6 (stat.) +/- 1.5 (syst.) mm using
a parametrization of the shower shape. Very good agreement was found between
data and a detailed Geant4 simulation.Comment: Paper published in Eur. Phys. J., includes 25 figures and 3 Table
X-shooter, the new wide band intermediate resolution spectrograph at the ESO Very Large Telescope
X-shooter is the first 2nd generation instrument of the ESO Very Large
Telescope(VLT). It is a very efficient, single-target, intermediate-resolution
spectrograph that was installed at the Cassegrain focus of UT2 in 2009. The
instrument covers, in a single exposure, the spectral range from 300 to 2500
nm. It is designed to maximize the sensitivity in this spectral range through
dichroic splitting in three arms with optimized optics, coatings, dispersive
elements and detectors. It operates at intermediate spectral resolution
(R~4,000 - 17,000, depending on wavelength and slit width) with fixed echelle
spectral format (prism cross-dispersers) in the three arms. It includes a
1.8"x4" Integral Field Unit as an alternative to the 11" long slits. A
dedicated data reduction package delivers fully calibrated two-dimensional and
extracted spectra over the full wavelength range. We describe the main
characteristics of the instrument and present its performance as measured
during commissioning, science verification and the first months of science
operations.Comment: accepted for publication in A&
The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) - 2018 Summary Report
The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a TeV-scale high-luminosity linear collider under development at CERN. Following the CLIC conceptual design published in 2012, this report provides an overview of the CLIC project, its current status, and future developments. It presents the CLIC physics potential and reports on design, technology, and implementation aspects of the accelerator and the detector. CLIC is foreseen to be built and operated in stages, at centre-of-mass energies of 380 GeV, 1.5 TeV and 3 TeV, respectively. CLIC uses a two-beam acceleration scheme, in which 12 GHz accelerating structures are powered via a high-current drive beam. For the first stage, an alternative with X-band klystron powering is also considered. CLIC accelerator optimisation, technical developments and system tests have resulted in an increased energy efficiency (power around 170 MW) for the 380 GeV stage, together with a reduced cost estimate at the level of 6 billion CHF. The detector concept has been refined using improved software tools. Significant progress has been made on detector technology developments for the tracking and calorimetry systems. A wide range of CLIC physics studies has been conducted, both through full detector simulations and parametric studies, together providing a broad overview of the CLIC physics potential. Each of the three energy stages adds cornerstones of the full CLIC physics programme, such as Higgs width and couplings, top-quark properties, Higgs self-coupling, direct searches, and many precision electroweak measurements. The interpretation of the combined results gives crucial and accurate insight into new physics, largely complementary to LHC and HL-LHC. The construction of the first CLIC energy stage could start by 2026. First beams would be available by 2035, marking the beginning of a broad CLIC physics programme spanning 25-30 years
Numerical approach to the semiclassical method of pair production for arbitrary spins and photon polarization
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 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