Vacuum birefringence in the head-on collision of XFEL and optical high-intensity laser pulses

Abstract

The focus of this article is on providing compact analytical expressions for the differential number of polarization flipped signal photons constituting the signal of vacuum birefringence in the head-on collision of x-ray free electron (XFEL) and optical high-intensity laser pulses. Our results allow for unprecedented insights into the scaling of the effect with the waists and pulse durations of both laser beams, the Rayleigh range of the high-intensity beam, as well as transverse and longitudinal offsets. They account for the decay of the differential number of signal photons in the far-field as a function of the azimuthal angle measured relative to the beam axis of the probe beam in forward direction, typically neglected by conventional approximations. Moreover, they even allow us to extract an analytical expression for the angular divergence of the perpendicularly polarized signal photons. We expect our formulas to be very useful for the planning and optimization of experimental scenarios aiming at the detection of vacuum birefringence in XFEL/high-intensity laser setups, such as the one put forward at the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF) at the European XFEL.