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arXiv · 2406.13135

Pair creation in electric fields

Christian Schubert
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Abstract

Sauter-Schwinger pair creation in electromagnetic fields is a fundamental prediction of QED and one of the motivations for the present efforts in constructing super-strong lasers. I will give a historical review of the subject, and then focus on two recent developments. The first one is the worldline instanton formalism, a sophisticated version of the WKB approximation that makes it possible to calculate the pair creation rate for complicated field configurations. The second one is an adaptation of the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism suitable for a detailed study of the formation of real particles in time and space.

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Christian Schubert. 2024-06-19. Pair creation in electric fields. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.13135

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