Schwinger pair production at finite temperature in QED

Abstract

We use the evolution operator method to find the Schwinger pair-production rate at finite temperature in scalar and spinor QED by counting the vacuum production, the induced production and the stimulated annihilation from the initial ensemble. It is shown that the pair-production rate for each state is factorized into the mean number at zero temperature and the initial thermal distribution for bosons and fermions.

Schwinger mechanism revisited

“…In this review, we have only considered the case where the system is initially in the vacuum state. This can be generalized to situations where the system is initially non-empty, such as a thermal system [56,[154][155][156][157][158], where quantum statistical effects will alter the production rate of particles by the external field. In QCD, it has also been argued that the Schwinger mechanism may lead to the dynamical generation of a gluon mass, that could explain some features of the Landau gauge propagators and verticein the soft sector [159].…”

Effective electromagnetic lagrangian at finite temperature and density in the electroweak model

“…Recently there has been much interest [24][25][26] in studying the finite temperature Casimir effect in higher dimensional space-time models with compactified extra dimensions, like the Randall-Sundrum models [27,28]. A literature search reveals that the effective lagrangian in a background magnetic field at finite temperature and density has been studied within the framework of QED [10][11][12]18], or within the framework of the electroweak model but prior to the breaking of the electroweak symmetry, when the magnetic fields that are present belong to the U(1) group of hypercharge and hence are called hypermagnetic fields [29][30][31]. The electroweak phase transition at finite temperature and in an external hypercharge magnetic field has been studied non-perturbatively using numerical techniques such as lattice Monte Carlo simulations [32], and perturbatively [33].…”

“…These pioneering papers lead to a number of important physical insights and applications: lightlight scattering in QED [9], pair production from vacuum in the presence of an electric field [10][11][12] and vacuum birefringence [13], among others. The one-loop QED effective lagrangian at finite temperature and density has been investigated in magnetic field background [14][15][16][17], in electric field background [18,19], in general background fields for the case of 0 + 1 [20,21] and 1 + 1 dimensional massless QED [22,23] and is very relevant and closely related to many physical phenomena such as, for example, the Casimir effect. When evaluating the QED effective lagrangian at finite temperature, the time component of the momentum four vector, over which we integrate, takes on only discrete values for a fixed temperature, while when computing the Casimir energy, an analogous substitution takes place in a space component of the momentum vector for a fixed distance between the plates.…”

Creation of a black hole pair with a domain wall

“…Such particle production is one of the decaying processes of the background field in the given vacuum state (for recent works, see e.g., [6,7]). As the gravitational analogy of the mechanism, it was proposed that the pair creation of BHs, which represents a nonperturbative topological fluctuation of the gravitational field, could be possible in the background magnetic field [8].…”