Critical Schwinger pair production
arXiv:1507.07802 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.090406
Abstract
We investigate Schwinger pair production in spatially inhomogeneous electric backgrounds. A critical point for the onset of pair production can be approached by fields that marginally provide sufficient electrostatic energy for an off-shell long-range electron-positron fluctuation to become a real pair. Close to this critical point, we observe features of universality which are analogous to continuous phase transitions in critical phenomena with the pair-production rate serving as an order parameter: electric backgrounds can be subdivided into universality classes and the onset of pair production exhibits characteristic scaling laws. An appropriate design of the electric background field can interpolate between power-law scaling, essential BKT-type scaling and a power-law scaling with log corrections. The corresponding critical exponents only depend on the large-scale features of the electric background, whereas the microscopic details of the background play the role of irrelevant perturbations not affecting criticality.
6 pages, 1 figure
References in corpus (14)
- Exact evolution equation for the effective potential
- Worldline Instantons II: The Fluctuation Prefactor
- Schwinger pair production in space- and time-dependent electric fields: Relating the Wigner formalism to quantum kinetic theory
- Finite size effects in stimulated laser pair production
- Pair production in laser fields oscillating in space and time
- The Schwinger mechanism revisited
- Multidimensional Worldline Instantons
- Pulse shape dependence in the dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect
- Lifting shell structures in the dynamically assisted Schwinger effect in periodic fields
- Polarization operator approach to pair creation in short laser pulses
- Nonperturbative pair production in interpolating fields
- Gutzwiller's Trace Formula and Vacuum Pair Production
- On the Vlasov equation for Schwinger pair production in a time-dependent electric field
- One,Two,Zero: Scales of Strong Interactions
Cited by in corpus (33)
- Advances in QED with intense background fields
- Dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect - non-perturbative versus perturbative aspects
- On the effect of time-dependent inhomogeneous magnetic fields on the particle momentum spectrum in electron-positron pair production
- Strong-Field Physics in QED and QCD: From Fundamentals to Applications
- Single and double nonlinear Compton scattering
- Ponderomotive effects in multiphoton pair production
- Momentum distribution of particles created in space-time-dependent colliding laser pulses
- Electron-positron pair production in external electric fields varying both in space and time
- Strong-field Breit-Wheeler pair production in short laser pulses: Relevance of spin effects
- Discrete worldline instantons
- Strong-Field Breit-Wheeler Pair Production in Two Consecutive Laser Pulses with Variable Time Delay
- Analog Sauter-Schwinger effect in semiconductors for spacetime-dependent fields
- Pulse envelope effects in nonlinear Breit-Wheeler pair-creation
- Thermodynamics of accelerated fermion gas and instability at Unruh temperature
- Afterglow of the dynamical Schwinger process: soft photons amass
- The Heisenberg-Euler effective action in slowly varying electric field inhomogeneities of Lorentzian shape
- Scale anomaly of a Lifshitz scalar: a universal quantum phase transition to discrete scale invariance
- Pair production from the vacuum by a weakly inhomogeneous space-dependent electric potential step
- Entanglement entropy in a time-dependent holographic Schwinger pair creation
- Assisted Vacuum Decay by Time Dependent Electric Fields
- No black holes from light
- Space-time resolved quantum field approach to Klein tunneling dynamics across a finite barrier
- Estimation of electric field in intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions
- Vacuum instability in a constant inhomogeneous electric field. A new example of exact nonperturbative calculations
- Phase control of Schwinger pair production by colliding laser pulses
- Quantum tunnelling from vacuum in multidimensions
- Response of the QED(2) Vacuum to a Quench: Long-term Oscillations of the Electric Field and the Pair Creation Rate
- Vacuum instability due to the creation of neutral Fermion with anomalous magnetic moment by magnetic-field inhomogeneities
- On the landscape of scale invariance in quantum mechanics
- Computational quantum field theory for fermion pair creation in 2-dimensional curved spacetimes
- The physics of adiabatic particle number in the Schwinger effect
- Condensed-matter analogs of the Sauter--Schwinger effect
- Phase transition analogs in laser collisions with a dark-field setup