Related papers: On the Schwinger effect during axion inflation
We consider a model of inflation in which the inflaton field is a rolling axion with a potential which is flat enough to support an intermediate phase of USR inflation. Because of the Chern-Simons interaction, one polarization of the gauge…
We evaluate the quantum backreaction due to a gauge field coupled to a pseudo-scalar field driving a slow-roll inflationary stage, the so-called axion inflation. The backreaction is evaluated for the first time using a gauge invariant…
Magnetic monopoles may be produced by the dual Schwinger effect in strong magnetic fields. Today, the strongest known magnetic fields in the universe are produced fleetingly in heavy-ion collisions. We use the complex worldline instanton…
We study constant classical electric fields and the Schwinger effect in de Sitter space, with potential implications for magnetogenesis and inflationary dark matter production. Treating the photon as a dynamical field, we show that…
We explore Schwinger pair production in rotating time-dependent electric fields using the real-time DHW formalism. We determine the time evolution of the Wigner function as well as asymptotic particle distributions neglecting back-reactions…
A fast-rolling axion can transfer its kinetic energy to gauge fields via the Chern-Simons coupling, leading to copious production of gauge quanta during inflation. The amplified gauge fields act as a source for both scalar and tensor…
Models of large-field inflation based on axion-like fields with shift symmetries can be simple and natural, and make a promising prediction of detectable primordial gravitational waves. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is known to constrain the…
The GEFF - the Gradient Expansion Formalism Factory - is a new Python package designed to study gauge-field production during inflation. The package provides a framework to implement and use the gradient expansion formalism (GEF), a…
In this work, we explore the possibility of Schwinger pair creation triggered by magneto-centrifugal effects in the magnetosphere of SgrA*. We show that these effects become extremely efficient in the presence of a vortex-driven magnetic…
We study electron-positron pair creation {from} the Dirac vacuum induced by a strong and slowly varying electric field (Schwinger effect) which is superimposed by a weak and rapidly changing electromagnetic field (dynamical pair creation).…
In this work, we show how the knowledge of the first few terms of the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian's weak-field expansion in a magnetic field background is enough to reconstruct the pair-production rate in a strong electric field background.…
We study the pair production of fermions in a time dependent axion background with and without an electric background. We construct the adiabatic mode functions which incorporate the gauge field and the axion velocity dependence of the…
Electron-positron pair production is considered for many-center systems with multiple bare nuclei immersed in a constant electric field. It is shown that there are two distinct regimes where the pair production rate is enhanced. At small…
Spontaneous pair production from background fields or spacetimes is one of the most prominent phenomena predicted by quantum field theory. The Schwinger mechanism of production of charged pairs by a strong electric field and the Hawking…
The interplay among the possible variation of gauge coupling and the inflationary dynamics is investigated in a simplified toy model. Depending upon various parameters (scalar mass, curvature scale at the end of inflation and at the onset…
A fast-rolling axion can transfer its kinetic energy to a gauge field via the Chern-Simons coupling, leading to copious production of gauge quanta, which can act as a source of gravitational waves (GWs) with potentially observable…
Non-perturbative electron-positron pair creation (Schwinger effect) is studied based on the equal-time Wigner formalism in 1+1 dimensions. An ab initio calculation of the Schwinger effect in the presence of a simple space- and…
We consider the generation of large-scale magnetic fields in slow-roll inflation. The inflaton field is described in a supergravity framework where the conformal invariance of the electromagnetic field is generically and naturally broken.…
Some field theoretical aspects, such as the effective action and Schwinger pair production, are critically reviewed in strong QED. The difference of the boundary conditions on the solutions of the field equation is discussed to result in…
The axion is a well-motivated candidate for the inflaton, as the radiative corrections that spoil many single-field models are avoided by virtue of its shift symmetry. However, axions generically couple to gauge sectors. As the axion…