Related papers: Transient phenomena in the axion assisted Schwinge…
We point out an enhancement of the pair production rate of charged fermions in a strong electric field in the presence of time dependent classical axion-like background field, which we call axion assisted Schwinger effect. While the…
Pair-creation of charged particles in a strong gauge-field background - the renowned Schwinger effect - can strongly alter the efficiency of gauge-field production during axion inflation. It is therefore crucial to have a clear…
The dynamically assisted Schwinger effect, the generation of fermion-antifermion pairs in vacuum under a strong, slow-varying field and a weak, high-frequency field, has become a promising avenue to probe the vacuum structure and the…
We study the production of massive fermions in arbitrary vector and axial-vector classical backgrounds using effective action techniques. A perturbative calculation shows the different features of each field and in particular it is seen…
We discuss several aspects of particle production in: (a) time dependent electric field and (b) expanding Friedmann background. In the first part of the paper, we provide an algebraic mapping between the differential equations describing…
In this article, we review recent theoretical works on the Schwingermechanism of particle production in external electrical fields. Although the non-perturbative Schwinger mechanism is at the center of this discussion, many of the…
The vacuum of quantum electrodynamics is unstable against the formation of many-body states in the presence of an external electric field, manifesting itself as the creation of electron-positron pairs (Schwinger effect). This effect has…
In these lecture notes we give an introduction to the kinetic equation approach to pair production form the vacuum in strong, time-dependent external fields (dynamical Schwinger process). We first give a derivation of the kinetic equation…
We consider the process of electron-positron pair production in the presence of strong electric backgrounds being rapidly switched on and off and examine the total particle yield. For sufficiently sharp field profiles, the particle number…
In quantum field theory, particle creation occurs, in general, when an intense external field, such as an electromagnetic field, breaks time translational invariance. This leads to an ambiguity in the definition of the vacuum state. In…
We formulate a stochastic generalisation of the Schwinger effect, extending pair production to statistically fluctuating gauge-field backgrounds. Our approach captures realistic field configurations that are transient, inhomogeneous, and…
We study the Schwinger mechanism for the pair production of fermions in the presence of an arbitrary time-dependent background electric field E(t) by directly evaluating the path integral. We obtain an exact non-perturbative result for the…
The angular momentum of fermion pairs generated by the Schwinger effect is studied in homogeneous (chromo)electromagnetic fields, mimicking the early stages of a heavy-ion collision. It is demonstrated that the angular momentum density of…
This article investigates the Schwinger effect for fermions with background electric and magnetic fields of constant strengths from the point of view of a uniformly accelerated or the Rindler observer. The Dirac equation is solved in a…
Quantum fields in time-dependent backgrounds generally lead to particle production. Here we consider "unexciting" backgrounds for which the net particle production vanishes. We start by considering the simple harmonic oscillator and…
Axion-like degrees of freedom generally interact with fermions through a shift symmetric coupling. As a consequence, a time-dependent axion will lead to the generation of fermions by amplifying their vacuum fluctuations. We provide the…
This thesis applies techniques from quantum field theory in curved spacetimes to study particle creation in external fields, focusing on the Schwinger effect (i.e., the production of particle-antiparticle pairs by intense electric fields).…
In the framework of QED with a strong background, we study particle creation (the Schwinger effect) by a time-dependent inverse square electric field. To this end corresponding exact in- and out-solutions of the Dirac and Klein-Gordon…
An axion background field induces tiny oscillating electric and magnetic fields in an external static magnetic field. This signature is used to search for axion dark matter. We use standard quantum field theory techniques to obtain an…
Electric flux may be screened by pair nucleation of heavy charges, a process that has a simple description in terms of a worldline instanton. When flux is wrapped around a small compact spatial dimension, worldline instantons still induce…