We study particles creation in arbitrary space-time dimensions by external electric fields, in particular, by fields, which are acting for a finite time. The time and dimensional analysis of the vacuum instability is presented. It is shown that the distributions of particles created by quasiconstant electric fields can be written in a form which has a thermal character and seems to be universal. Its application, for example, to the particles creation in external constant gravitational field reproduces the Hawking temperature exactly.Comment: 36 pages, LaTe

QED with strong external backgrounds that can create particles from the vacuum is well developed for the so-called t-electric potential steps, which are time-dependent external electric fields that are switched on and off at some time instants. However, there exist many physically interesting situations where external backgrounds do not switch off at the time infinity. E.g., these are timeindependent nonuniform electric fields that are concentrated in restricted space areas. The latter backgrounds represent a kind of spatial x-electric potential steps for charged particles. They can also create particles from the vacuum, the Klein paradox being closely related to this process. Approaches elaborated for treating quantum effects in the t-electric potential steps are not directly applicable to the x-electric potential steps and their generalization for x-electric potential steps was not sufficiently developed. We believe that the present work represents a consistent solution of the latter problem. We have considered a canonical quantization of the Dirac and scalar fields with x-electric potential step and have found in-and out-creation and annihilation operators that allow one to have particle interpretation of the physical system under consideration. To identify in-and out-operators we have performed a detailed mathematical and physical analysis of solutions of the relativistic wave equations with an x-electric potential step with subsequent QFT analysis of correctness of such an identification. We elaborated a nonperturbative (in the external field) technique that allows one to calculate all characteristics of zero-order processes, such, for example, scattering, reflection, and electron-positron pair creation, without radiation corrections, and also to calculate Feynman diagrams that describe all characteristics of processes with interaction between the in-, out-particles and photons. These diagrams have formally the usual form, but contain special propagators. Expressions for these propagators in terms of in-and out-solutions are presented. We apply the elaborated approach to two popular exactly solvable cases of x-electric potential steps, namely, to the Sauter potential and to the Klein step.

We consider the time evolution of a quantized field in backgrounds that violate the vacuum stability (particle-creating backgrounds). Our aim is to study the exact form of the final quantum state (the density operator at a final instant of time) that has emerged from a given arbitrary initial state (from a given arbitrary density operator at the initial time instant) in the course of the evolution. We find a generating functional that allows us to have the density operators for any initial state. Averaging over states of a subsystem of antiparticles (particles), we obtain explicit forms for reduced density operators for subsystems of particles (antiparticles). Studying one-particle correlation functions, we establish a one-to-one correspondence between these functions and the reduced density operators. It is shown that in the general case a presence of bosons (e.g. gluons) in an initial state increases the creation rate of the same kind of bosons. We discuss the question (and its relation to the initial stage of quark-gluon plasma formation) whether a thermal form of one-particle distribution can appear even if the final state of the complete system is not a thermal equilibrium. In this respect, we discuss some cases when a pair creation by an electric-like field can mimic a one-particle thermal distribution. We apply our technics to some QFT problems in slowly varying electric-like backgrounds: electric, SU(3) chromoelectric, and metric. In particular, we study the time and temperature behavior of mean numbers of created particles provided switching on and off effects of the external field are negligible. It is shown that at high temperatures and in slowly varying electric fields the rate of particle creation is essentially time-dependent.

Our previous results on the nonperturbative calculations of the mean current and of the energymomentum tensor in QED with the T-constant electric field are generalized to arbitrary dimensions. The renormalized mean values are found, and the vacuum polarization contributions and particle creation contributions to these mean values are isolated in the large T limit; we also relate the vacuum polarization contributions to the one-loop effective Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian. Peculiarities in odd dimensions are considered in detail. We adapt general results obtained in 2 þ 1 dimensions to the conditions which are realized in the Dirac model for graphene. We study the quantum electronic and energy transport in the graphene at low carrier density and low temperatures when quantum interference effects are important. Our description of the quantum transport in the graphene is based on the so-called generalized Furry picture in QED where the strong external field is taken into account nonperturbatively; this approach is not restricted to a semiclassical approximation for carriers and does not use any statistical assumptions inherent in the Boltzmann transport theory. In addition, we consider the evolution of the mean electromagnetic field in the graphene, taking into account the backreaction of the matter field to the applied external field. We find solutions of the corresponding Dirac-Maxwell set of equations and with their help we calculate the effective mean electromagnetic field and effective mean values of the current and the energy-momentum tensor. The nonlinear and linear I-V characteristics experimentally observed in both low-and high-mobility graphene samples are quite well explained in the framework of the proposed approach, their peculiarities being essentially due to the carrier creation from the vacuum by the applied electric field.