Generation of High-Brilliance Polarized $\gamma$-Rays via Vacuum Dichroism-assisted Vacuum Birefringence

Abstract

We put forward a novel method to generate high-brilliance polarized $\gamma$-photon beams via vacuum dichroism (VD)-assisted vacuum birefringence (VB) effect. We split a linearly polarized (LP) laser pulse into two subpulses with the first one colliding with a dense unpolarized electron beam to generate LP $\gamma$ photons (via nonlinear Compton scattering), which then further collide with the second subpulse and are partially transformed into circularly polarized ones via the VB effect. We find that by manipulating the relative polarization of two subpulses, one can ``purify'' (i.e., enhance) the polarization of the $\gamma$-photon beam via the VD effect. Due to the VD assistance, the VB effect reaches optimal when the relative polarization is nearly $30^\circ$, not the widely used $45^\circ$ in the common VB detection methods. In addition, our method can be used to efficiently confirm the well-known VB effect itself, which has not been directly observed in experiments yet.