Field-induced decay of quantum vacuum: visualizing pair production in a classical photonic system
Quantum Physics
2015-05-19 v1
Abstract
The phenomenon of vacuum decay, i.e. electron-positron pair production due to the instability of the quantum electrodynamics vacuum in an external field, is a remarkable prediction of Dirac theory whose experimental observation is still lacking. Here a classic wave optics analogue of vacuum decay, based on light propagation in curved waveguide superlattices, is proposed. Our photonic analogue enables a simple and experimentally-accessible visualization in space of the process of pair production as break up of an initially negative-energy Gaussian wave packet, representing an electron in the Dirac sea, under the influence of an oscillating electric field.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1009.0160,
title = {Field-induced decay of quantum vacuum: visualizing pair production in a classical photonic system},
author = {Stefano Longhi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1009.0160},
year = {2015}
}