Ponderomotive effects in multiphoton pair production

TL;DR

This paper investigates how ponderomotive forces influence electron-positron pair production in inhomogeneous oscillating electric fields using the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism, revealing clear signatures in particle spectra.

Contribution

It introduces a semi-classical analysis and effective mass concept to interpret numerical results in multiphoton pair production under spatially inhomogeneous fields.

Findings

Signatures of ponderomotive forces in particle spectra

Effective mass and trajectory-based analysis elucidate pair production dynamics

Asymptotic spectra reflect ponderomotive effects

Abstract

The Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism is employed to investigate electron-positron pair production in cylindrically symmetric but otherwise spatially inhomogeneous, oscillating electric fields. The oscillation frequencies are hereby tuned to obtain multiphoton pair production in the nonperturbative threshold regime. An effective mass as well as a trajectory-based semi-classical analysis are introduced in order to interpret the numerical results for the distribution functions as well as for the particle yields and spectra. The results, including the asymptotic particle spectra, display clear signatures of ponderomotive forces.