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The interaction of a high-power laser with a solid target provides ways to produce beams of $\gamma$-photons. For normal incidence of the laser on the target the beams usually appear in a form of two lobes, which are symmetric with respect to the laser propagation axis. In this work we demonstrate via three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations a regime where for oblique incidence the emission of a collimated $\gamma$-photon beam is in the direction parallel to the target surface. The process is ascribed to the interference pattern in the electromagnetic field formed by the incident and reflected laser pulse. The electromagnetic field accelerates electrons to the GeV energy level, while temporarily directing their momentum along the target surface. Consequently, they emit a collimated $\gamma$-photon beam in the same direction. The dependencies of $\gamma$-photon emission on the incident angle, laser pulse polarization, power and duration and target thickness are also addressed in the paper. The beam directionality is important for designing future experiments. In addition, this setup causes the generation of high-order harmonics propagating along the target surface., Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures

The interaction of an ultra-intense laser with matter is an efficient source of high-energy particles, with efforts directed towards narrowing the divergence and simultaneously increasing the brightness. In this paper we report on emission of highly collimated, ultrabright, attosecond $\gamma$-photons and generation of dense electron-positron pairs via a tunable particle generation scheme which utilizes the interaction of two high-power lasers with a thin wire target. Irradiating the target with a radially polarized laser pulse first produces a series of high charge, short duration, electron bunches with low transverse momentum. These electron bunches subsequently collide with a counter-propagating high intensity laser. Depending on the intensity of the counter-propagating laser, the scheme generates highly collimated ultra-bright GeV-level $\gamma$-beams and/or electron-positron plasma of solid density level.

Radiative cooling of electron beams interacting with counter-propagating electromagnetic waves is analyzed, taking into account the quantum modification of the radiation friction force. Central attention is paid to the evolution of the energy spectrum of electrons accelerated by the laser wake field acceleration mechanism. As an electron beam loses energy to radiation, the mean energy decreases and the form of the energy distribution also changes due to quantum-mechanical spectral broadening., Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures

Motivated by experimental initiatives such as the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields (HIBEF), we study Compton scattering of x-rays at electrons in a strong external field (e.g., a strong optical laser) with special emphasis on the polarization-changing (i.e., birefringent) contribution on the amplitude level. Apart from being a potential background process for the planned vacuum birefringence experiments, this effect could be used for diagnostic purposes. Since the birefringent signal from free electrons (i.e., without the external field) vanishes in forward direction, the ratio of the birefringent and the normal (polarization conserving) contribution yields information about the field strength at the interaction point., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

The effect of magnetic fields on the frequencies of toroidal oscillations of neutron stars is derived to lowest order. Interpreting the fine structure in the QPO power spectrum of magnetars following giant flares reported by Strohmayer and Watts (2006) to be "Zeeman splitting" of degenerate toroidal modes, we estimate a crustal magnetic field of order 10^{15} Gauss or more. We suggest that residual m, -m symmetry following such splitting might allow beating of individual frequency components that is slow enough to be observed., Comment: 1 table

Neutrino-photon interactions in the presence of an external homogeneous constant electromagnetic field are studied. The $\nu \nu \gamma $ amplitude is calculated in an electromagnetic field of the general type, when the two field invariants are nonzero., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

Motivated by several recent papers on string-inspired calculations in QED, we here present our own use of world-line techniques in order to calculate the vacuum polarization and effective action in scalar and spinor QED with external arbitrary constant electromagnetic field configuration., Comment: 9 pages

Photon splitting in a very strong magnetic field is analyzed for energy $\omega < 2m$. The amplitude obtained on the base of operator-diagram technique is used. It is shown that in a magnetic field much higher than critical one the splitting amplitude is independent on the field. Our calculation is in a good agreement with previous results of Adler and in a strong contradiction with recent paper of Mentzel et al., Comment: 5 pages,Revtex , 4 figures

Using the Schwinger-Keldysh (closed time path or CTP) and Feynman-Vernon influence functional formalisms we obtain an expression for the influence functional in terms of Bogoliubov coefficients for the case of spinor quantum electrodynamics. Then we derive a CTP effective action in semiclassical approximation and its cumulant expansion. Using it we obtain a equation for the description of the charged particle creation in electric field and of backreaction of charged quantum fields and their fluctuations on time evolution of this electric field. Also an intimate connection between CTP effective action and decoherence functional will allow us to analyze how macroscopic electromagnetic fields are ``measured'' through interaction with charges and thereby rendered classical., Comment: 14 pages,Revtex,no figures

Strassler's formulation of the string-derived Bern-Kosower formalism is extended to consider QED processes in homogeneous constant external field. A compact expression for the contribution of the one-loop with arbitrary number of external photon lines is given for scalar QED. Extension to spinor QED is shortly discussed., Comment: 14 pages,Revtex,no figures