Pair creation in electric fields
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
2024-06-21 v1 High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
Sauter-Schwinger pair creation in electromagnetic fields is a fundamental prediction of QED and one of the motivations for the present efforts in constructing super-strong lasers. I will give a historical review of the subject, and then focus on two recent developments. The first one is the worldline instanton formalism, a sophisticated version of the WKB approximation that makes it possible to calculate the pair creation rate for complicated field configurations. The second one is an adaptation of the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism suitable for a detailed study of the formation of real particles in time and space.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2406.13135,
title = {Pair creation in electric fields},
author = {Christian Schubert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.13135},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
10 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of "45th Symposium on Nuclear Physics", Cocoyoc, Mexico, Jan 8-11, 2024