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Limitations of the paraxial beam model in the study of quantum vacuum signals

Felix Karbstein* and Fabian Schütze†

  • *Contact author: felix.karbstein@uni-jena.de
  • †Contact author: fabian.schuetze@uni-jena.de
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Phys. Rev. D 111, 096026 – Published 30 May, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bmxl-776l

Abstract

Studies of nonlinear quantum vacuum signals often model the driving laser fields as paraxial beams. This in particular holds for analytic approaches. While this allows for reliable predictions in most situations, there are also notable exceptions. A prominent example is the overestimation of the polarization-flipped signal photon yield in the collision of two equally focused, parallel polarized laser beams by a factor of about 6. In the present work, we identify the origin of this deficiency and devise a strategy to obtain accurate closed-form expressions also in cases challenging the conventional (leading order) paraxial beam model. We demonstrate the potential of our approach on the example of two linearly polarized laser pulses colliding at a generic collision angle.

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Phys. Rev. D 111, 096026– Published 30 May, 2025
  • Received 6 March 2025
  • Accepted 19 May 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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