Suppression of linear Breit-Wheeler pair production with polarized photons

In the ultraintense laser-solid interaction, our recent work [Phys. Rev. E 109, 035204 (2024)] has revealed that the linear Breit-Wheeler (BW) process via photon-photon collisions will become the dominant mechanism for electron-positron pair production at the normalized laser amplitude a_0<400–500. Here, we investigate the impact of photon polarization on linear Breit-Wheeler pair production in the similar laser-solid setup, mainly focusing on the difference of positron yields between polarized and unpolarized situations. Two facts serve as the motivation for this work: (i) the emitted photons via nonlinear Compton scattering are highly linearly polarized in the strong-field QED regime; (ii) the linear BW cross section σ_γγ is dependent on photon polarization. By using two-dimensional QED particle-in-cell simulations, we find that the photon polarization effect can suppress the positron yield by 5 pair production. This is because the polarization directions of colliding photons are predominantly parallel, resulting in a reduced σ_γγ compared to the unpolarized cross section. The suppression degree is decreased with the enhancement of the nonlinear QED strength at higher laser intensities. This work emphasizes the importance of photon polarization in accurately predicting linear BW pair production in laser-driven plasmas.