Carrier envelope phase and laser pulse shape effects on Schwinger vacuum pair production in super-Gaussian asymmetric electric fields

Abstract

We investigate the combined effects of carrier envelope phase and laser pulse shape on electron-positron pair production in the presence of an external asymmetric super-Gaussian electric field by solving the quantum Vlasov equation. By varying the field asymmetry, the pulse shape from Gaussian to super-Gaussian, and the carrier envelope phase, we show the momentum distribution and the number density of created pairs to exhibit extreme sensitivity to these field characteristics. The effects are also qualitatively explained by analyzing the turning-point structures within the WKB formalism. We observed that multiphoton pair production dominates in the case of long falling-pulse asymmetry. For a short falling pulse with a flat-top super-Gaussian laser profile, pair production is further facilitated. For certain field parameters, we demonstrate that the number density can be enhanced by two to three orders of magnitude.