Franz-Keldysh effect in strong-field QED

Abstract

We studied a QED analog of the Franz-Keldysh effect, and the interplay between the non-perturbative (the Schwinger mechanism) and the perturbative particle production mechanism from the vacuum in the presence of a strong slow field superimposed by a weak field. We found that the Franz-Keldysh effect significantly affects the particle production: (i) the perturbative particle production occurs even below the threshold energy; (ii) the perturbative production becomes the most efficient just above the threshold energy; and (iii) an oscillating behavior appears in the production number above the threshold energy. These non-trivial changes are suppressed only weakly by powers of the critical field strength of QED. A relation to the dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism and implications to experiments are also discussed.

16 pages, 6 figures; v2: typos corrected, references added, discussions improved (to appear in PRD)

References in corpus (5)

• Some Features of the Glasma
• Dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism
• Barrier control in tunneling e^+ e^- photoproduction
• Sauter-Schwinger pair creation dynamically assisted by a plane wave
• Finite pulse effects on $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair creation from strong electric fields

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