Analysis of the Third Harmonic of a Vacuum Response in a Subcritical Laser Field

Abstract

We investigate a nonlinear response of the physical vacuum by the example of the third harmonic in radiation of the electron-positron-photon plasma excited by a strong time dependent electric field at the focus spot of counterpropagating laser pulses. The investigation was developed within the framework of the Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon kinetic theory nonperturbatively describing vacuum creation of the quasiparticle electron-positron plasma (EPP) and different channels of its interaction with the photon subsystem in the single-photon approximation that are opened in the presence of a strong semiclassical field. We investigate the radiation of EPP in the annihilation channel on the basis of the well known approximations and compare the obtained result with the semiclassical radiation of the plasma oscillations. In the high-frequency range for large adiabaticity parameter the quantum radiation dominates in comparison with the semiclassical one.