Quantum unitary dynamics of a charged fermionic field and Schwinger effect

A bstract In quantum field theory, particle creation occurs, in general, when an intense external field, such as an electromagnetic field, breaks time translational invariance. This leads to an ambiguity in the definition of the vacuum state. In cosmological backgrounds this ambiguity has been reduc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of high energy physics 2021-10, Vol.2021 (10), p.1-22, Article 74
Main Authors: Álvarez-Domínguez, Álvaro, Garay, Luis J., García-Heredia, David, Martín-Benito, Mercedes
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Classical and Quantum Gravitation
Electric fields
Electromagnetic fields
Elementary Particles
Field theory
Gauge Symmetry
High energy physics
Measurement
Nonperturbative Effects
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Quantum Field Theories
Quantum Field Theory
Quantum Physics
Quantum theory
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Relativity Theory
Scalars
String Theory
Time dependence
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A bstract In quantum field theory, particle creation occurs, in general, when an intense external field, such as an electromagnetic field, breaks time translational invariance. This leads to an ambiguity in the definition of the vacuum state. In cosmological backgrounds this ambiguity has been reduced by imposing that the quantization preserves the symmetries of the system and that the dynamics is unitarily implemented. In this work, we apply these requirements to the quantization of a massive charged fermionic field coupled to a classical time-dependent homogeneous electric field, extending previous studies done for a scalar field. We characterize the quantizations fulfilling the criteria above and we show that they form a unique equivalence class of unitarily related quantizations, which provide a well-defined number of created particles at all finite times.
ISSN:1029-8479
1029-8479
DOI:10.1007/JHEP10(2021)074