Photon splitting in a laser field

Understand

Photon splitting due to vacuum polarization in a laser field is considered.

• Using an operator technique, we derive the amplitudes for arbitrary strength, spectral content and polarization of the laser field.
• The case of a monochromatic circularly polarized laser field is studied in detail and the amplitudes are obtained as three-fold integrals.
• The asymptotic behavior of the amplitudes for various limits of interest are investigated also in the case of a linearly polarized laser field.