  The interaction of high energy electrons, positrons, and photons with intense
laser pulses is studied in head-on collision geometry. It is shown that
electrons and/or positrons undergo a cascade-type process involving multiple
emissions of photons. These photons can consequently convert into
electron-positron pairs. As a result charged particles quickly lose their
energy developing an exponentially decaying energy distribution, which
suppresses the emission of high energy photons, thus reducing the number of
electron-positron pairs being generated. Therefore, this type of interaction
suppresses the development of the electromagnetic avalanche-type discharge,
i.e., the exponential growth of the number of electrons, positrons, and photons
does not occur in the course of interaction. The suppression will occur when 3D
effects can be neglected in the transverse particle orbits, i.e., for
sufficiently broad laser pulses with intensities that are not too extreme. The
final distributions of electrons, positrons, and photons are calculated for the
case of a high energy e-beam interacting with a counter-streaming, short
intense laser pulse. The energy loss of the e-beam, which requires a
self-consistent quantum description, plays an important role in this process,
as well as provides a clear experimental observable for the transition from the
classical to quantum regime of interaction.
