Effects of finite spatial extent on Schwinger pair production

Electron-positron pair production from vacuum in external electric fields with space and time dependencies is studied numerically using real time Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism. The influence of the spatial focusing scale of the electric field on momentum distribution and the total yield of the p...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. D 2019-07, Vol.100 (1), p.016003, Article 016003
Main Authors: Ababekri, Mamutjan, Xie, Bai-Song, Zhang, Jun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Electric fields
Inhomogeneity
Momentum
Pair production
Particle production
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:Electron-positron pair production from vacuum in external electric fields with space and time dependencies is studied numerically using real time Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism. The influence of the spatial focusing scale of the electric field on momentum distribution and the total yield of the particles is investigated by considering space-time dependent electric fields in 1 + 1 dimensions with various temporal configurations. With the decrease of the spatial extent of the external field, signatures of the temporal field are weakened in the momentum spectrum. Moreover, in the extremely small spatial extent, novel features emerge due to the combined effects of both temporal and spatial variations. We also find that for dynamically assisted particle production, while the total particle yield drops significantly in small spatial extents, the assistance mechanism tends to increase in these highly inhomogeneous regimes, where the slow and fast pulses are affected differently by the overall spatial inhomogeneity.
ISSN:2470-0010
2470-0029
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.100.016003