English

Wigner function and pair production in parallel electric and magnetic fields

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2019-03-13 v2

Abstract

We derive analytical formulas for the equal-time Wigner function in an electromagnetic field of arbitrary strength. While the magnetic field is assumed to be constant, the electric field is assumed to be space-independent and oriented parallel to the magnetic field. The Wigner function is first decomposed in terms of the so-called Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner (DHW) functions and then the transverse-momentum dependence is separated using a new set of basis functions which depend on the quantum number nn of the Landau levels. Equations for the coefficients are derived and then solved for the case of a constant electric field. The pair-production rate for each Landau level is calculated. In the case of finite temperature and chemical potential, the pair-production rate is suppressed by Pauli's exclusion principle.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.01146,
  title  = {Wigner function and pair production in parallel electric and magnetic fields},
  author = {Xin-li Sheng and Ren-hong Fang and Qun Wang and Dirk H. Rischke},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.01146},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

RevTex 4, 16 pages, 2 figures; Some references are added, minor changes are made in the text

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:30:21.500Z