Vacuum Decay Time in Strong External Fields

Abstract

We consider dynamics of vacuum decay and particle production in the context of short pulse laser experiments. We identify and evaluate the invariant "materialization time," $\tau$, the timescale for the conversion of an electromagnetic field energy into particles, and we compare to the laser related time scales.

4 pages, 2 figures; improved representation of eq. 12, improved figures, added references, improved introductory material, and corrected typos

References in corpus (4)

• Dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism
• The Schwinger mechanism revisited
• Pair Production Beyond the Schwinger Formula in Time-Dependent Electric Fields
• Pion and muon production in electron-positron photon plasma

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Is the photon paramagnetic?
• Time evolution of the QED vacuum in a uniform electric Field: Complete analytic solution by spinorial decomposition
• Vacuum Structure and Dark Energy
• Particle production in matter at extreme conditions