Speaker
Description
Recent progress in laser technology opens new possibilities in high-field science, notably to investigate the largely unexplored strong-field quantum electrodynamics (SFQED) regime where electron-positron pairs can be created directly from light-light or even light-vacuum interactions. Here we propose a new strategy where a single laser pulse is first used to accelerate electrons to high energy using standard LWFA, is self-focused in a high density gas jet, increasing the laser pulse amplitude a0 from 4 to 40 and is then reflected on a plasma mirror eventually colliding with the electrons just behind. This original concept with a plasma-mirror based ICS source and laser intensity booster could be a game changer allowing to reach deep SFQED regime with a simple experimental setup using a single laser and guaranteeing automatic spatial and temporal overlap. We show a start-to-end PIC simulation of this scheme in the case of a laser with 100 J of energy on target and show the strong potential of this scheme, allowing to probe SFQED at chi > 5.
