Schwinger effect in compact space: a real time calculation

Abstract

We compute the discharging rate of a uniform electric field due to Schwinger pair production in $(1+1)$-dimensional scalar electrodynamics with a compact dimension of radius $R$. Our calculation is performed in real time, using the in-in formalism. For large compactification radii, $R\to \infty$, we recover the standard non compact space result. However, other ranges of values of $R$ and of the mass $m$ of the charged scalar give rise to a richer set of behaviors. For $R\gtrsim \mathcal{O}(1/m)$ with $m$ large enough, the electric field oscillates in time, whereas for $R\to 0$ it decreases in steps. We discuss the origin of these results.

13 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• The Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses
• Super-Adiabatic Particle Number in Schwinger and de Sitter Particle Production
• Secularly growing loop corrections in strong electric fields
• Observer dependence of bubble nucleation and Schwinger pair production
• Thermally versus dynamically assisted Schwinger pair production