Polarization operator approach to pair creation in short laser pulses

Understand

Short-pulse effects are investigated for the nonlinear Breit-Wheeler process, i.e.

• the production of an electron-positron pair induced by a gamma photon inside an intense plane-wave laser pulse.
• To obtain the total pair-creation probability we verify (to leading-order) the cutting rule for the polarization operator in the realm of strong-field QED by an explicit calculation.
• Using a double-integral representation for the leading-order contribution to the polarization operator, compact expressions for the total pair-creation probability inside an arbitrary plane-wave background field are derived.