Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses
Abstract
Particle production due to external fields (electric, chromoelectric, or gravitational) requires evolving an initial state through an interaction with a time-dependent background, with the rate being computed from a Bogoliubov transformation between the in and out vacua. When the background fields have temporal profiles with substructure, a semiclassical analysis of this problem confronts the full subtlety of the Stokes phenomenon: WKB solutions are only local, while the production rate requires global information. We give a simple quantitative explanation of the recently computed [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 150404 (2009)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.102.150404] oscillatory momentum spectrum of e+e- pairs produced from vacuum subjected to a time-dependent electric field with subcycle laser pulse structure. This approach also explains naturally why for spinor and scalar QED these oscillations are out of phase.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- June 2010
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.250402
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1004.2509
- Bibcode:
- 2010PhRvL.104y0402D
- Keywords:
-
- 12.20.Ds;
- 03.65.Sq;
- 11.15.Tk;
- Specific calculations;
- Semiclassical theories and applications;
- Other nonperturbative techniques;
- High Energy Physics - Theory;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology;
- Quantum Physics
- E-Print:
- 5 pages, 4 figs.