Positron generation via two sequent laser pulses irradiating a solid aluminum target

Abstract

A scheme of two sequent laser pulses irradiating a thin solid aluminum target to generate electron-positron pairs via the multi-photon Breit-Wheeler (BW) process is proposed, in order to ease the usual requirement of the laser intensity. 2D and 3D particle-in-cell simulations show that the peak intensity of the laser pulses used in our scheme is only half of that in the case of one laser pulse with a peak intensity of 2 × 1023 W/cm2, but the positron yield is one order higher than that of the latter, which is around 3.7894 × 107 and has a maximal density of 3.134 × 1022 cm-3 when the time interval between the two pulses is set to Δt ≈ 2T0. Therefore, our scheme provides a helpful suggestion for the observation of the BW process in laboratories.