Thermally versus dynamically assisted Schwinger pair production

Abstract

We study electron-positron pair production by the combination of a strong, constant electric field and a thermal background. We show that this process is similar to dynamically assisted Schwinger pair production, where the strong field is instead assisted by another coherent field, which is weaker but faster. We treat the interaction with the photons from the thermal background perturbatively, while the interaction with the electric field is nonperturbative (i.e. a Furry picture expansion in $\alpha$). At $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }^2)$ we have ordinary perturbative Breit-Wheeler pair production assisted nonperturbatively by the electric field. Already at this order we recover the same exponential part of the probability as previous studies, which did not expand in $\alpha$. This means that we do not have to consider higher orders, so our approach allows us to calculate the pre-exponential part of the probability, which has not been obtained before in this regime. Although the prefactor is in general subdominant compared to the exponential part, in this case it can be important because it scales as ${\alpha }^2\ll 1$ and is therefore much smaller than the prefactor at $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }^0)$ (pure Schwinger pair production). We show that, because of the exponential enhancement, $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }^2)$ still gives the dominant contribution for temperatures above a certain threshold, but, because of the small prefactor, the threshold is higher than what the exponential alone would suggest.

Version 2: Results unchanged, references added, matches PRD version. 9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (34)

• Dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism
• Catalysis of Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production
• Schwinger pair production in space- and time-dependent electric fields: Relating the Wigner formalism to quantum kinetic theory
• Complete QED theory of multiphoton trident pair production in strong laser fields
• Trident pair production in strong laser pulses
• Momentum Spectra for Dynamically Assisted Schwinger Pair Production
• Trident pair production in a constant crossed field
• Lifting shell structures in the dynamically assisted Schwinger effect in periodic fields
• Pulse shape dependence in the dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect
• Thermal Schwinger pair production at arbitrary coupling
• Trident pair production in plane waves: Coherence, exchange, and spacetime inhomogeneity
• Dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect - non-perturbative versus perturbative aspects
• One-loop energy-momentum tensor in QED with electric-like background
• Density matrix of a quantum field in a particle-creating background
• Nonlinear trident pair production in an arbitrary plane wave: a focus on the properties of the transition amplitude
• Dynamically assisted Schwinger effect beyond the spatially-uniform-field approximation
• Wigner function and pair production in parallel electric and magnetic fields
• Photon-stimulated production of electron-positron pairs in electric field
• Sauter-Schwinger pair creation dynamically assisted by a plane wave
• The effect of interference on the trident process in a constant crossed field
• Schwinger pair production at nonzero temperatures or in compact directions
• Observing Thermal Schwinger Pair Production
• Thermally-induced vacuum instability in a single plane wave
• Prefactor in the dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect
• Worldline sphaleron for thermal Schwinger pair production
• Schwinger effect in inhomogeneous electric fields
• Schwinger Pair Production at Finite Temperature
• Schwinger Pair Production at Finite Temperature in QED
• Schwinger Pair Production at Finite Temperature in Scalar QED
• Finite temperature Schwinger pair production in coexistent electric and magnetic fields
• Perturbative methods for assisted nonperturbative pair production
• Virtual and Thermal Schwinger Processes
• Nonperturbative QED Effective Action at Finite Temperature
• Spectral representation of the particle production out of equilibrium - Schwinger mechanism in pulsed electric fields

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Observing Thermal Schwinger Pair Production
• Signatures of the Schwinger mechanism assisted by a fast-oscillating electric field
• Study of pair production in inhomogeneous two-color electric fields using the computational quantum field theory
• Schwinger effect in compact space: a real time calculation
• Schwinger pair production correction in thermal system
• Schwinger Effect in Compact Space
• Resurgence in the Scalar Quantum Electrodynamics Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian
• Multi-photon enhancement of the Schwinger pair production mechanism under strong FEL radiation