Related papers: Gradient-Produced Neutrinos
Massless neutrino exchange leads to a new long-range force between matter. Recently, it was claimed both that the potential energy due to this interaction i) dominates the total energy of neutron stars and ii) that it is zero. We…
We provide a pedagogical review of the Schwinger effect, i.e., the non-perturbative production of particle and anti-particle pairs from the vacuum by strong fields, as well as related strong-field phenomena. Beginning with an overview of…
Highly magnetized neutron stars have magnetic fields of order of the critical field and can lead to measurable QED effects. We consider the Goldreich-Julian pulsar model with supercritical magnetic fields, induced subcritical electric…
Recently, a new theory based on superluminal tunnelling has been proposed to explain the transition of highly energetic neutrinos propagating in matter to tachyonic states. In this work, we determine the possible mechanisms that lead…
We consider the rate of fermion-antifermion pair creation by an external field. We derive a rate formula that is valid for a coupling with arbitrary vector and axial vector components to first order in perturbation theory. This is then…
Quantum electrodynamics predicts that in a strong electric field, electron-positron pairs are produced by the Schwinger process, which can be interpreted as quantum tunnelling through the Coulomb potential barrier. If magnetic monopoles…
The extreme properties of neutron stars provide unique opportunities to put constraints on new particles and interactions. In this paper, we point out a few interesting ideas that place constraints on light millicharged fermions, with…
The creation of particles by two colliding strong laser beams is considered. It is found that the electron-positron pairs created in the laser field via the Schwinger mechanism may recollide after one or several oscillations in the field.…
Strong enough electric field is predicted to spontaneously create electron-positron pairs in vacuum via Schwinger effect. A somewhat similar effect is predicted to occur in sufficiently strong inhomogeneous gravitational fields. However,…
Neutrino--antineutrino ($\nu\bar\nu$) pair production is one of the main processes responsible for the energy loss of stars. Apart from the collision of two ($\gamma\gamma\to\nu\bar\nu$) or three ($\gamma\gamma\gamma\to\nu\bar\nu$) real…
Production of a massive neutrino-antineutrino pair by a virtual polarized photon in the Weiberg-Salam model with mixing is studied. The rate of the neutrino production by photons with various polarizations is found at values of the magnetic…
Astrophysical compact objects, such as magnetars, neutron star mergers, etc, have strong electromagnetic fields beyond the Schwinger field ($B_c = 4.4 \times 10^{13}\, {\rm G}$). In strong electric fields, electron-positron pairs are…
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…
Electron-positron pairs can be produced via the Schwinger mechanism in the presence of strong electric fields. In particular, the fields involved in $\alpha$ decay and nuclear fission are strong enough to produce them. The energy of the…
We study how light scalar fields can change the stellar landscape by triggering a new phase of nuclear matter. Scalars coupled to nucleons can develop a non-trivial expectation value at finite baryon density. This sourcing of a scalar…
A strong electromagnetic field polarizes the vacuum and in the presence of an electric field creates pairs of a charged particle and its anti-particle. Magnetars, highly magnetized neutron stars with magnetic field comparable to or greater…
Charged particles in static electric and magnetic fields have Landau levels and tunneling states from the vacuum. Using the instanton method of Phys. Rev. D 65, 105002 (2002), we obtain the formulae for the pair-production rate in spinor…
Sterile neutrinos can be generated in the early universe through oscillations with active neutrinos and represent a popular and well-studied candidate for our universe's dark matter. Stringent constraints from X-ray and gamma-ray line…
We show that neutrinos can be produced through standard electroweak interactions in matter with time-dependent density.
We consider the Schwinger production of baryons in an external electric field in the worldline instanton approach. The process occurs in the confinement regime hence the holographic QCD and the Chiral Lagrangian are used as the tools. The…