Collimated QED Cascades with Curved Plasma Mirror

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a single ultra-intense laser pulse reflected from a curved plasma mirror can efficiently produce highly collimated electron-positron pairs, advancing the control and application of QED cascades.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using a curved plasma mirror to generate well-collimated particle beams with high efficiency at moderate laser powers.

Findings

Achieved highly collimated electron-positron pair production.

Demonstrated effectiveness at laser powers of 13PW.

Produced tightly focused particle beams via QED cascades.

Abstract

Converting light into matter has been a longstanding goal in physics, particularly the creation of electron-positron pairs through quantum electrodynamic (QED) processes. While current approaches using multiple colliding laser pulses can achieve this conversion, they struggle to produce well-collimated particle beams - a crucial requirement for practical applications. Here we demonstrate that a single ultra-intense laser pulse, when reflected from a curved plasma mirror, can generate highly collimated electron-positron pairs with unprecedented efficiency. By focusing the laser to field strengths exceeding $a_0 > 2000$, our method triggers QED cascades that produce tightly focused particle beams, distinctly different from the diffuse plasmas created by conventional multi-laser setups. The technique works even at relatively modest laser powers of 13PW, making it immediately testable at existing facilities. This breakthrough opens new possibilities for studying fundamental QED processes and generating controlled matter-antimatter plasmas.