A detailed analysis of electron-positron–pair creation from vacuum in counterpropagating laser pulses is presented. Our particular interest lies in the nonperturbative multiphoton regime of interaction in different frequency domains. The pair creation may proceed both resonantly and nonresonantly where characteristic Rabi oscillations are shown for the near-resonance. By means of a quasiclassical method we obtain intuitive physical insight into the process. An independent numerical approach confirms and extends the analytical results by providing rich information on momentum spectra, resonance widths, and the time dependence of the creation probability, both on and off the resonance.

• Received 1 September 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.022122