Signatures of Radiation Reaction in Ultra-Intense Laser Fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates how radiation reaction influences charged particles in ultra-intense laser fields, proposing a measurable symmetry-breaking parameter and analyzing the sensitivity of energy transfer to initial conditions using the Landau-Lifshitz equation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel symmetry-breaking parameter to measure radiation reaction effects and provides an analytic solution to the Landau-Lifshitz equation in ultra-intense laser fields.

Findings

Radiation reaction causes measurable symmetry breaking in laser fields.

Energy transfer is highly sensitive to initial conditions due to nonlinearity.

Comparison of collision modes reveals differences in radiation reaction effects.

Abstract

We discuss radiation reaction effects on charges propagating in ultra-intense laser fields. Our analysis is based on an analytic solution of the Landau-Lifshitz equation. We suggest to measure radiation reaction in terms of a symmetry breaking parameter associated with the violation of null translation invariance in the direction opposite to the laser beam. As the Landau-Lifshitz equation is nonlinear the energy transfer within the pulse is rather sensitive to initial conditions. This is elucidated by comparing colliding and fixed target modes in electron laser collisions.