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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Signatures of linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in polarized γγ collisions

Qian Zhao1, Liang Tang2, Feng Wan1, Bo-Chao Liu1, Ruo-Yu Liu3, Rui-Zhi Yang4, Jin-Qing Yu5,*, Xue-Guang Ren1, Zhong-Feng Xu1 et al.

Yong-Tao Zhao1, Yong-Sheng Huang6,7,†, and Jian-Xing Li1,‡

  • 1Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Nonequilibrium Synthesis and Modulation of Condensed Matter, Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Information and Quantum Optoelectronic Devices, School of Physics, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
  • 2College of Physics and Hebei Key Laboratory of Photophysics Research and Application, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China
  • 3School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, 210023 Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
  • 4CAS Key Labrotory for Research in Galaxies and Cosmology, Department of Astronomy, School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China
  • 5School of Physics and Electronics, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
  • 6School of Science, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
  • 7Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

  • *jinqing.yu@hnu.edu.cn
  • †huangysh59@mail.sysu.edu.cn
  • ‡jianxing@xjtu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 105, L071902 – Published 26 April, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.L071902

Abstract

The polarization characteristics of the linear Breit-Wheeler (LBW) pair-production process in polarized γγ colliders have been investigated via our developed spin-resolved binary collision simulation method. We find that the polarization of γ-photons modifies the kinematics of scattering particles and induces the correlated energy-angle shift of LBW pairs, and the latter’s polarization characteristic depends on the helicity configures of scattering particles. We confirm that the polarized γγ collider with an asymmetric setup can be performed with currently achievable laser-driven high-density x rays and high-brilliance γ-photon beams to produce abundant polarized LBW pairs, fulfilling the detection power of polarimetries. Our method and results on the polarized LBW process have plenty of significant applications in strong-field physics, high-energy physics and astrophysics, such as calibrating and monitoring the polarized γγ collider and challenging the current understanding of astrophysical objects through enhancing the opacity of γ-photons to exacerbate the inconsistency between some observations and standard models.

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Phys. Rev. D 105, L071902– Published 26 April, 2022
  • Received 27 November 2021
  • Accepted 7 April 2022
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