Kinetic theory of vacuum pair production in uniform electric fields revisited

Abstract

We investigate the phenomenon of electron-positron pair production from vacuum in the presence of a uniform time-dependent electric field of arbitrary polarization. Taking into account the interaction with the external classical background in a nonperturbative manner, we quantize the electron-positron field and derive a system of ten quantum kinetic equations (QKEs) showing that the previously-used QKEs are incorrect once the external field rotates in space. We employ then the Wigner-function formalism of the field quantization and establish a direct connection between the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner (DHW) approach to investigating the vacuum pair-production process and the QKEs. We provide a self-contained description of the two theoretical frameworks rigorously proving their equivalence and present an exact one-to-one correspondence between the kinetic functions involved within the two techniques. Special focus is placed on the analysis of the spin effects in the final particle distributions.

19 pages (including proof corrections)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Relativistic Quantum Kinetic Theory: Higher order contributions in assisted Schwinger pair production
• Spirals, vortices, and helicity entanglements in dynamical Sauter-Schwinger pair creation
• Nonadiabatic quantum kinetic equations and Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism for Schwinger pair production in time-varying electric fields with multiple components
• Study on axial fields in the dynamically assisted Schwinger effect