Dense e$^-$e$^+$ plasma formation in magnetic dipole wave: vacuum breakdown by 10-PW class lasers

Abstract: When studying the interaction of matter with extreme fields using multipetawatt lasers, there are two limiting cases maximizing either the electric field or the magnetic field. Here, the main attention is paid to the optimal configuration of laser beams in the form of an m-dipole wave, which maximizes the magnetic field, and the corresponding production of pair plasma via a QED cascade using 10-PW class lasers. We show that the threshold of vacuum breakdown with respect to avalanche-like pair generation is about 10 PW. Using 3D PIC modeling in the specified fields, we go deeper into the physics of vacuum breakdown, i.e. we examined in detail the individual trajectories of particles produced in inhomogeneous electric and magnetic fields, the space-time distributions of pair densities on the avalanche stage, and the energy distributions of charged particles and gamma photons. The forming plasma structures represent concentric rings around the central magnetic axis, which can result in significant change of laser-plasma interaction in comparison with the case of an e-dipole wave.