- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review D

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Polarization-dependent interference in nonlinear Compton scattering

Zu-dong Zhao1 and Suo Tang1,2,3,*

  • 1College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, Shandong, 266100, China
  • 2Engineering Research Center of Advanced Marine Physical Instruments and Equipment, Ministry of Education, Qingdao, Shandong, 266100, China
  • 3Qingdao Key Laboratory of Optics and Optoelectronics, Qingdao, Shandong, 266100, China

  • *Contact author: tangsuo@ouc.edu.cn
PDF

Phys. Rev. D 112, 056033 – Published 26 September, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mp3j-y31w

Abstract

We investigate the phase interference effects in the nonlinear Compton scattering via the collision between a high-energy electron and the laser in the intermediate intensity region, and reveal that the importance of interference effects on the scattered photons depends sensitively on the relative polarization of the scattered photons and laser pulse. For scattered photons polarized parallel to the laser field, the effective distance between two interfered phase points is much larger than that for perpendicularly polarized photons. To signalize the phase interference effect in potential experiments, we introduce the double-pulse scenario for the scattering process, and show that the interference between two phase-separated pulses could significantly modulate the energy-momentum distribution of the scattered photons, leading to the reshaping of the scattered photons’ energy spectrum. By narrowing the angular acceptance of the scattered photons, the spectral modulation can be amplified and sustained for an experiment-realizable phase separation between two pulses.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (55)

  1. A. H. Compton, Phys. Rev. 21, 483 (1923).
  2. R. D. Evans, Compton Effect (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1958), pp. 218–298.
  3. R. Hajima, Phys. Procedia 84, 35 (2016).
  4. V. B. Berestetskii, E. M. Lifshitz, and L. P. Pitaevskii, Quantum Electrodynamics (Second edition) (Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 1982).
  5. W. Greiner and J. Reinhardt, Quantum Electrodynamics (Springer Science & Business Media, New York, 2008).
  6. S. K. Lee, H. T. Kim, I. W. Choi, C. M. Kim, and C. H. Nam, J. Korean Phys. Soc. 73, 179 (2018).
  7. W. Li, Z. Gan, L. Yu, C. Wang, Y. Liu, Z. Guo, L. Xu, M. Xu, Y. Hang, Y. Xu et al., Opt. Lett. 43, 5681 (2018).
  8. C. Olofsson and A. Gonoskov, High Power Laser Sci. Eng. 11, e67 (2023).
  9. A. Di Piazza, C. Müller, K. Z. Hatsagortsyan, and C. H. Keitel, Rev. Mod. Phys. 84, 1177 (2012).
  10. A. Gonoskov, T. G. Blackburn, M. Marklund, and S. S. Bulanov, Rev. Mod. Phys. 94, 045001 (2022).
  11. A. Fedotov, A. Ilderton, F. Karbstein, B. King, D. Seipt, H. Taya, and G. Torgrimsson, Phys. Rep. 1010, 1 (2023).
  12. A. I. Nikishov and V. I. Ritus, Sov. Phys. JETP 19, 529 (1964).
  13. D. Seipt, arXiv:1701.03692.
  14. T. N. Wistisen, Phys. Rev. D 90, 125008 (2014).
  15. C. F. Nielsen, R. Holtzapple, and B. King, Phys. Rev. D 106, 013010 (2022).
  16. A. Gonoskov, S. Bastrakov, E. Efimenko, A. Ilderton, M. Marklund, I. Meyerov, A. Muraviev, A. Sergeev, I. Surmin, and E. Wallin, Phys. Rev. E 92, 023305 (2015).
  17. T. G. Blackburn, B. King, and S. Tang, Phys. Plasmas 30, 093903 (2023).
  18. S. Tang, Phys. Lett. B 859, 139136 (2024).
  19. L. S. Brown and T. W. B. Kibble, Phys. Rev. 133, A705 (1964).
  20. D. Yu. Ivanov, G. L. Kotkin, and V. G. Serbo, Eur. Phys. J. C 36, 127 (2004).
  21. C. Harvey, T. Heinzl, and A. Ilderton, Phys. Rev. A 79, 063407 (2009).
  22. D. Seipt and B. Kämpfer, Laser Phys. 23, 075301 (2013).
  23. A. Ilderton, B. King, and D. Seipt, Phys. Rev. A 99, 042121 (2019).
  24. A. Di Piazza, M. Tamburini, S. Meuren, and C. H. Keitel, Phys. Rev. A 99, 022125 (2019).
  25. D. Seipt and B. King, Phys. Rev. A 102, 052805 (2020).
  26. M. Boca and V. Florescu, Phys. Rev. A 80, 053403 (2009).
  27. F. Mackenroth, A. Di Piazza, and C. H. Keitel, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 063903 (2010).
  28. T. Heinzl, D. Seipt, and B. Kämpfer, Phys. Rev. A 81, 022125 (2010).
  29. F. Mackenroth and A. Di Piazza, Phys. Rev. A 83, 032106 (2011).
  30. D. Seipt and B. Kämpfer, Phys. Rev. A 83, 022101 (2011).
  31. S. Tang, Y. Xin, M. Wen, M. A. Bake, and B. Xie, Matter Radiat. Extremes 9, 037204 (2024).
  32. D. Seipt, D. Del Sorbo, C. P. Ridgers, and A. G. R. Thomas, Phys. Rev. A 100, 061402 (2019).
  33. A. Ilderton, B. King, and S. Tang, Phys. Lett. B 804, 135410 (2020).
  34. C. Bula et al. (E144 Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3116 (1996).
  35. C. Bamber, S. J. Boege, T. Koffas, T. Kotseroglou, A. C. Melissinos, D. D. Meyerhofer, D. A. Reis, W. Ragg, C. Bula, K. T. McDonald et al., Phys. Rev. D 60, 092004 (1999).
  36. M. Mirzaie, C. Hojbota, D. Kim, V. Pathak, T. Pak, C. Kim, H. W. Lee, J. W. Yoon, S. Lee, Y.-J. Rhee et al., Nat. Photonics 18, 1212 (2024).
  37. J. M. Cole, K. T. Behm, E. Gerstmayr, T. G. Blackburn, J. C. Wood, C. D. Baird, M. J. Duff, C. Harvey, A. Ilderton, A. S. Joglekar et al., Phys. Rev. X 8, 011020 (2018).
  38. K. Poder, M. Tamburini, G. Sarri, A. Di Piazza, S. Kuschel, C. D. Baird, K. Behm, S. Bohlen, J. M. Cole, D. J. Corvan et al., Phys. Rev. X 8, 031004 (2018).
  39. H. Abramowicz et al., Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 230, 2445 (2021).
  40. S. Meuren, in Third Conference on Extremely High Intensity Laser Physics (ExHILP) (2019).
  41. F. C. Salgado, N. Cavanagh, M. Tamburini, D. W. Storey, R. Beyer, P. H. Bucksbaum, Z. Chen, A. Di Piazza, E. Gerstmayr, Harsh et al., New J. Phys. 24, 015002 (2021).
  42. A. J. Macleod, J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 2249, 012022 (2022).
  43. V. I. Ritus, J. Russ. Laser Res. 6, 497 (1985).
  44. B. King and S. Tang, Phys. Rev. A 102, 022809 (2020).
  45. T. Heinzl, B. King, and A. J. MacLeod, Phys. Rev. A 102, 063110 (2020).
  46. C. N. Harvey, A. Ilderton, and B. King, Phys. Rev. A 91, 013822 (2015).
  47. S. Tang, B. King, and H. Hu, Phys. Lett. B 809, 135701 (2020).
  48. V. Dinu, C. Harvey, A. Ilderton, M. Marklund, and G. Torgrimsson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 044801 (2016).
  49. T. G. Blackburn, D. Seipt, S. S. Bulanov, and M. Marklund, Phys. Rev. A 101, 012505 (2020).
  50. D. Seipt, S. G. Rykovanov, A. Surzhykov, and S. Fritzsche, Phys. Rev. A 91, 033402 (2015).
  51. B. King, Phys. Rev. D 103, 036018 (2021).
  52. S. Tang and B. King, Phys. Rev. D 104, 096019 (2021).
  53. A. Angioi, F. Mackenroth, and A. Di Piazza, Phys. Rev. A 93, 052102 (2016).
  54. A. Angioi and A. Di Piazza, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 010402 (2018).
  55. B. M. Dillon and B. King, Phys. Rev. D 99, 035048 (2019).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. D 112, 056033– Published 26 September, 2025
  • Received 31 August 2025
  • Accepted 11 September 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

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. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation