Nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process in the collision of a photon with two plane waves

Abstract: The nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process of electron-positron pair production off a probe photon colliding with a low-frequency and a high-frequency electromagnetic wave that propagate in the same direction is analyzed. We calculate the pair-production probability and the spectra of the created pair in the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler processes of pair production off a probe photon colliding with two plane waves or one of these two plane waves. The differences of these two cases are discussed. We evidently show, in the two-wave case, the possibility of Breit-Wheeler pair production with simultaneous photon emission into the low-frequency wave and the high multiphoton phenomena: (i) Breit-Wheeler pair production by absorption of the probe photon and a large number of photons from the low-frequency wave, in addition to the absorption of one photon from the high-frequency wave; (ii) Breit-Wheeler pair production by absorption of the probe photon and one photon from the high-frequency wave with simultaneous emission of a large number of photons into the low-frequency wave. The phenomenon of photon emission into the wave cannot happen in the one-wave case. Compared with the one-wave case, the contributions from high multiphoton processes are largely enhanced in the two-wave case. The results presented in this article show a possible way to access the observations of the phenomenon of photon emission into the wave and high multiphoton phenomenon in Breit-Wheeler pair production even with the laser-beam intensity of order $10^{18}~\rm{W/cm^2}$.