Electron-positron Pair Creation by Counterpropagating Laser Pulses: Role of Carrier Envelope phase

The effect of carrier envelope phase (CEP) on the spatio-temporal distribution of the electron-positron pairs created by untraintense counterpropagating femtosecond laser pulses is studied. When the laser pulses are linearly polarized, the temporal distribution of the pairs is found to be sensitive to CEP. On the hand, it is found to be largely insensitive to CEP for circularly polarized pulses.