Sep 15 – 21, 2019
Hotel Hermitage, La Biodola Bay, Isola d'Elba, Italy
Europe/Rome timezone

Investigating linear Breit-Wheeler pair production at Gemini

Sep 16, 2019, 7:00 PM
1h
Parking Area (Hotel Hermitage)

Parking Area

Hotel Hermitage

poster WG4 - Application of compact and high-gradient accelerators Cheese and Wine Poster Session 1

Speaker

Brendan Kettle (Imperial College London)

Description

The two-photon (linear) Breit-Wheeler mechanism is the simplest process through which light can be converted into matter. Despite its simplicity only the multi-photon (non-linear) process has yet been measured definitively. The linear process remains elusive as the production threshold of $2 m_e c^2 \approx 1\,\mathrm{MeV}$ is comparatively high for two photons and requires two bright sources of gamma- and X-rays housed at the same facility. In addition, competing non-vacuum processes producing electron-positron pairs, such as Bethe-Heitler and Trident, make measuring the linear Breit-Wheeler process in isolation even more challenging. In an experiment performed at the Gemini laser in 2018 we collided $\sim 100$ MeV gamma rays produced using a laser wakefield accelerator with multi-keV X-rays emitted from a hot plasma with the aim of detecting positrons from the linear Breit-Wheeler process.
We report on the success of the individual components of the setup, including the gamma and X-ray sources, as well as the single particle detectors coupled to a magnetic chicane, and provide an update on the ongoing data analysis.

Primary authors

Elias Gerstmayr (Imperial College London) Brendan Kettle (Imperial College London) Mr Guillermo Marrero Samarin (Queen's University Belfast) Mr Dominik Hollatz (University Jena) Cary Colgan Robbie Watt (Imperial College London) Aaron Alejo (Queen's University of Belfast) Mr Christopher Baird (University of York) Simon Bohlen (DESY - FLA) Michael Campbell (CERN) Dominik Dannheim (CERN) Chris Gregory (Central Laser Facility) Mr Harsh Harsh (University Jena) Dr Peter Hatfield (University of Oxford) Dr Matt Hill (LLNL) Jesus Hinojosa (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) yiftach Katzir (STFC Central Laser Facility) Dr John Morton (AWE) Chris Murphy (York University) Zulfikar Najmudin (Imperial College London) Andreas Nürnberg (CERN) Dr Rajeev Pattahill (Central Laser Facility) Kristjan Poder (DESY) Dr Christian Roedel (Helmholtz Institut Jena) Mr Franz Roeder (University Jena) Gianluca Sarri (Queen's University Belfast) Mr Andreas Seidel (Helmholtz Institute Jena) Simon Spannagel (CERN) Christopher Spindloe (Central Laser Facility) Sven Steinke (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Mark Stevenson (AWE) Dr Matthew Streeter (Imperial College London) Daniel Symes (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory) Dr Alec Thomas (University of Michigan) Brian Thomas (AWE) Christopher Underwood (University of York) Prof. Matthew Zepf (Helmholtz Institute Jena) Prof. Steven Rose (Imperial College London) Stuart Mangles (Imperial College London)

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