Fully polarized Compton scattering in plane waves and its polarization transfer

Abstract

Fully polarized Compton scattering from a beam of spin-polarized electrons is investigated in plane-wave backgrounds in a broad intensity region from the perturbative to the nonperturbative regimes. In the perturbative regime, polarized linear Compton scattering is considered for investigating polarization transfer from a single laser photon to a scattered photon, and in the high-intensity region, the polarized locally monochromatic approximation and locally constant field approximation are established and are employed to study polarization transfer from an incoming electron to a scattered photon. The numerical results suggest an appreciable improvement of about 10% in the scattering probability in the intermediate-intensity region if the electron’s longitudinal spin is parallel to the laser rotation. The longitudinal spin of the incoming electron can be transferred to the scattered photon with an efficiency that increases with laser intensity and collisional energy. For collision between an optical laser with frequency ∼1 eV and a 10 GeV electron, this polarization transfer efficiency can increase from about 20% in the perturbative regime to about 50% in the nonperturbative regime for scattered photons with relatively high energy.