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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Trapping and acceleration of spin-polarized positrons from γ photon splitting in wakefields

Wei-Yuan Liu1,2,*, Kun Xue3,*, Feng Wan3, Min Chen1,2,†, Jian-Xing Li3,‡, Feng Liu1,2, Su-Ming Weng1,2, Zheng-Ming Sheng1,2,4, and Jie Zhang1,2,4

  • 1Key Laboratory for Laser Plasmas (MOE), School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 2Collaborative Innovation Center of IFSA (CICIFSA), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 3Ministry 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
  • 4Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †minchen@sjtu.edu.cn
  • ‡jianxing@xjtu.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L022028 – Published 3 May, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L022028

Abstract

Energetic spin-polarized positrons are very useful for forefront research such as e−e+ collider physics, but it is still quite challenging to generate such sources. Here, we propose an efficient scheme of trapping and accelerating polarized positrons in plasma wakefields. By developing a fully spin-resolved Monte Carlo method, we find that in the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production the polarization of intermediate γ photons significantly affects the pair spin polarization, and ignoring this effect would result in an overestimation of the pair yield and polarization degree. In particular, seed electrons colliding with a bichromatic laser create polarized γ photons which split into e−e+ pairs via the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process with an average (partial) positron polarization above 30% (70%). Over 70% of positrons are then trapped and accelerated in the recovered wakefields driven by a hollow electron beam, obtaining an energy gain of 3.5 GeV/cm with slight depolarization. Our method provides the potential for constructing compact polarized positron sources for future applications and may also attract broad interest in strong-field physics, high-energy physics, and particle physics.

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Phys. Rev. Research 4, L022028– Published 3 May, 2022
  • Received 28 October 2020
  • Revised 29 December 2021
  • Accepted 10 April 2022
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