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With the rapid development of high-power petawatt class lasers worldwide, exploring physics in the strong field QED regime will become one of the frontiers for laser–plasma interactions research. Particle-in-cell codes, including quantum emission processes, are powerful tools for predicting and analyzing future experiments where the physics of relativistic plasma is strongly affected by strong field QED processes. The spin/polarization dependence of these quantum processes has been of recent interest. In this article, we perform a parametric study of the interaction of two laser pulses with an ultrarelativistic electron beam. The first pulse is optimized to generate high-energy photons by nonlinear Compton scattering and efficiently decelerate electron beam through the quantum radiation reaction. The second pulse is optimized to generate electron–positron pairs by the nonlinear Breit–Wheeler decay of photons with the maximum polarization dependence. This may be experimentally realized as a verification of the strong field QED framework, including the spin/polarization rates. 

Abstract By taking the spin and polarization of the electrons, positrons and photons into account in the strong-field QED processes of nonlinear Compton emission and pair production, we find that the growth rate of QED cascades in ultra-intense laser fields can be substantially reduced. While this means that fewer particles are produced, we also found them to be highly polarized. We further find that the high-energy tail of the particle spectra is polarized opposite to that expected from Sokolov–Ternov theory, which cannot be explained by just taking into account spin-asymmetries in the pair production process, but results significantly from ‘spin-straggling’. We employ a kinetic equation approach for the electron, positron and photon distributions, each of them spin/polarization-resolved, with the QED effects of photon emission and pair production modelled by a spin/polarization dependent Boltzmann-type collision operator. For photon-seeded cascades, depending on the photon polarization, we find an excess or a shortage of particle production in the early stages of cascade development, which provides a path towards a controlled experiment. Throughout this paper we focus on rotating electric field configuration, which represent an idealized model and allows for a straightforward interpretation of the observed effects. 

Abstract The formation and evolution of post-solitons has been discussed for quite some time both analytically and through the use of particle-in-cell (PIC) codes. It is however only recently that they have been directly observed in laser-plasma experiments. Relativistic electromagnetic (EM) solitons are localised structures that can occur in collisionless plasmas. They consist of a low-frequency EM wave trapped in a low electron number-density cavity surrounded by a shell with a higher electron number-density. Here we describe the results of an experiment in which a 100 TW Ti:sapphire laser (30 fs, 800 nm) irradiates a $0.03\mathrm{g}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-3}$TMPTA foam target with a focused intensity $I_{\mathrm{l}}=9.5\times {10}^{17}\mathrm{W}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$. A third harmonic ( ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{p}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{e}}\simeq 266$nm) probe is employed to diagnose plasma motion for 25 ps after the main pulse interaction via Doppler-Spectroscopy. Both radiation-hydrodynamics and 2D PIC simulations are performed to aid in the interpretation of the experimental results. We show that the rapid motion of the probe critical-surface observed in the experiment might be a signature of post-soliton wall motion.