New Journal of Physics (Jan 2020)

Spin-dependent radiative deflection in the quantum radiation-reaction regime

  • X S Geng,
  • L L Ji,
  • B F Shen,
  • B Feng,
  • Z Guo,
  • Q Q Han,
  • C Y Qin,
  • N W Wang,
  • W Q Wang,
  • Y T Wu,
  • X Yan,
  • Q Yu,
  • L G Zhang,
  • Z Z Xu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ab623b
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 22, no. 1
p. 013007

Abstract

Read online

A new spin-dependent deflection mechanism is revealed by considering the spin-correlated radiation-reaction force during laser-electron collision. We found that such deflection originates from the non-zero work done by the radiation-reaction force along the laser polarization direction in each half-period, which is larger/smaller for spin-anti-paralleled/spin-paralleled electrons. The resulted anti-symmetric deflection is further accumulated when the spin-projection onto the laser magnetic field is reversed in adjacent half-periods. The discovered mechanism dominates over the Stern–Gerlach deflection for electrons of several hundreds of MeV and 10 PW-level laser peak power. The results provide a new perspective to study the strong-field QED physics in quantum radiation-reaction regime and an approach to leverage the study of radiation-dominated and strong-field QED physics via particle spins.

Keywords