Radiation Reaction Effects in Cascade Scattering of Intense, Tightly Focused Laser Pulses by Relativistic Electrons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how intense, focused laser pulses interact with relativistic electrons, considering radiation reaction effects, and proposes a method using a second laser pulse to enhance scattering efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a numerical analysis of radiation damping effects in cascade scattering and introduces a novel approach using a second laser pulse to improve scattering outcomes.

Findings

Radiation damping significantly affects electron scattering at high energies.

A second co-propagating laser pulse can mitigate energy loss issues.

The study advances understanding of laser-electron interactions in high-intensity regimes.

Abstract

Non-linear cascade scattering of intense, tightly focused laser pulses by relativistic electrons is studied numerically in the classical approximation including the radiation damping for the quantum parameter hwx-ray/E<1 and an arbitrary radiation parameter Kai. The electron energy loss, along with its side scattering by the ponderomotive force, makes the scattering in the vicinity of high laser field nearly impossible at high electron energies. The use of a second, co-propagating laser pulse as a booster is shown to solve this problem.