Exact results for scattering on ultra-short plane wave backgrounds

Understand

We give exact results for the emission spectra of both nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair production and nonlinear Compton scattering in ultra-intense, ultra-short duration plane wave backgrounds, modelled as delta-function pulses.

• This includes closed form expressions for total scattering probabilities.
• We show explicitly that these probabilities do not exhibit the power-law scaling with intensity associated with the conjectured breakdown of (Furry picture) perturbation theory, instead scaling logarithmically in the high-intensity limit.