Schwinger pair production in counterpropagating laser pulses: Identifying volume factors

Abstract

We investigate the nonperturbative process of vacuum pair production in a combination of two counterpropagating linearly polarized laser pulses of a finite spatial extent. By means of the locally-constant field approximation (LCFA), we calculate the total particle yield for the corresponding four-dimensional setup and compare it with the estimates obtained for simplified low-dimensional scenarios. Within the domain where the LCFA is well justified, we examine a combination of two plane-wave pulses, a standing electromagnetic wave, and a spatially uniform oscillating field and demonstrate that at each of these three levels of approximation, one can accurately predict the actual particle number by multiplying the results by properly chosen volume factors depending on the field parameters. We present closed-form expressions for these factors providing universal prescriptions for evaluating the particle yield. Our final formula connecting the spatially uniform setup with the four-dimensional scenario has a relative uncertainty of the level of $10\%$. The explicit correspondences deduced in this study not only prove the relevance of the approximate predictions, but also allow one to quickly estimate the number of pairs for various realistic scenarios without performing multidimensional LCFA integrations.