Precision Measurement of Trident Production in Strong Electromagnetic Fields

Phys Rev Lett. 2023 Feb 17;130(7):071601. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.071601.

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that the trident process e^{-}→e^{-}e^{+}e^{-} in a strong external field, with a spatial extension comparable to the effective radiation length, is well understood theoretically. The experiment, conducted at CERN, probes values for the strong field parameter χ up to 2.4. Experimental data and theoretical expectations using the local constant field approximation show remarkable agreement over almost 3 orders of magnitude in yield.