We propose a new catalysis mechanism for non-perturbative vacuum electron-positron pair production, by superimposing a plane-wave X-ray probe beam with a strongly focused optical laser pulse, such as is planned at the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) facility. We compute the absorption coefficient arising from vacuum polarization effects for photons below threshold in a strong electric field. This set-up should facilitate the (first) observation of this non-perturbative QED effect with planned light sources such as ELI yielding an envisioned intensity of order 10^{26}W/cm^2.
Using the worldline formalism we compute an effective action for fermions under a temporally modulated electric field and a spatially modulated magnetic field. It is known that the former leads to an enhanced Schwinger Mechanism, while we find that the latter can also result in enhanced particle production and even cause a reorganization of the vacuum to acquire a larger dynamical mass in equilibrium which spatially assists the Magnetic Catalysis.
The non-perturbative Schwinger-Dyson equation is used to show that chiral symmetry is dynamically broken in QED at weak gauge couplings when an external uniform magnetic field is present. A complete analysis of this phenomenon may shed light on the Pauli problem, namely, why $α$ = 1/137.
We study the effect of primordial black holes on the classical rate of nucleation of AdS regions within the standard electroweak vacuum at high temperature. We find that the energy barrier for transitions to the new vacuum, which determines the exponential suppression of the nucleation rate, can be reduced significantly, or even eliminated completely, in the black-hole background if the Standard Model Higgs is coupled to gravity through the renormalizable term $ξ{\cal R} h^2$.
We solve the Schwinger-Dyson equations for (2+1)-dimensional QED in the presence of a strong external magnetic field. The calculation is done at finite temperature and the fermionic self energy is not supposed to be momentum-independent, which is the usual simplification in such calculations. The phase diagram in the temperature-magnetic field plane is determined. For intermediate magnetic fields the critical temperature turns out to have a square root dependence on the magnetic field, but for very strong magnetic fields it approaches a B-independent limiting value.
We study the instability of the Higgs vacuum caused by a cloud of strings. By catalysis, the decay rate of the vacuum is highly enhanced and, when the energy density of the cloud is larger than the critical value, a semi-classical vacuum decay occurs. We also discuss the relation between the string cloud and observational constraints on the cosmic strings from the viewpoint of the catalysis, which are converted into bounds on the parameters of the Higgs potential.
We present simple new approximate formulas, for both scalar and spinor QED, for the number of particles produced from vacuum by a time dependent electric field, incorporating the interference effects that arise from an arbitrary number of distinct semiclassical turning points. Such interference effects are important when the temporal profile of the laser pulse has subcycle structure. We show how the resulting semiclassical intuition may be used to guide the design of temporal profiles that enhance the momentum spectrum due to interference effects. The result is easy to implement and generally …
We present a simple and intuitive description of both, the Schwinger effect and false vacuum decay through bubble nucleation, as tunneling problems in one-dimensional relativistic quantum mechanics. Both problems can be described by an effective potential that depends on a single variable of dimension length, which measures the separation of the particles in the Schwinger pair, or the radius of a bubble for the vacuum decay. We show that both problems can be described as tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics if one interprets this variable as the position of a relativistic particle wi…
In this work, we consider the effect of a constant anomalous magnetic moment (AMM) of quarks in the SU(2) Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model in the mean field approximation. To this end, we use the Schwinger {\it ansatz}, which represents a linear magnetic field term in the Lagrangian. A regularization method inspired in the vacuum magnetic regularization (VMR) is adopted to avoid ultraviolet divergences. Our results indicate a smooth decrease of the pseudocritical temperature and quark condensates for magnetic fields $B \leq 0.1$ GeV$^2$ when a sizable AMM is considered. We found only a small window f…
By duality approach, we study condensate mass of QCD vacuum via dilaton wall background in presence of parameter $c$ which represents the gluon condensation in holographic set up. First from Wilson line calculation we find $m^2_0$ (condensate parameter in mixed nonlocal condensation) whose behavior mimics that of QCD. The value of $m^2_0$ that we find by this approach, is in agreement with QCD data. In the second step we consider produced mass m via Schwinger effect mechanism in presence of parameter $c$. We show that generally gluon condensation contribute mass dominantly and produced mass vi…
Particle production due to external fields (electric, chromo-electric or gravitational) requires evolving an initial state through an interaction with a time-dependent background, with the rate being computed from a Bogoliubov transformation between the in and out vacua. When the background fields have temporal profiles with sub-structure, a semiclassical analysis of this problem confronts the full subtlety of the Stokes phenomenon: WKB solutions are only local, while the production rate requires global information. Incorporating the Stokes phenomenon, we give a simple quantitative explanation…
Vacuum to nuclear matter phase transition has been studied in presence of constant external background magnetic field with the mean field approximation in Walecka model. The anomalous nucleon magnetic moment has been taken into account using the modified "weak" field expansion of the fermion propagator having non-trivial correction terms for charged as well as for neutral particles. The effect of nucleon magnetic moment is found to favour the magnetic catalysis effect at zero temperature and zero baryon density. However, extending the study to finite temperatures, it is observed that the anoma…
We derive a systematic procedure of computing the vacuum functional and fermion condensate of the massive Schwinger model via a perturbative expansion in the fermion mass. We compute numerical results for the first nontrivial order.
Several years ago Schwinger proposed a physical mechanism for sonoluminescence in terms of photon production due to changes in the properties of the quantum-electrodynamic (QED) vacuum arising from a collapsing dielectric bubble. This mechanism can be re-phrased in terms of the Casimir effect and has recently been the subject of considerable controversy. The present paper probes Schwinger's suggestion in detail: Using the sudden approximation we calculate Bogolubov coefficients relating the QED vacuum in the presence of the expanded bubble to that in the presence of the collapsed bubble. In th…
The chiral symmetry breaking in the presence of external magnetic field is studied in the framework of logarithmic quark-sigma model. The effective logarithmic mesonic potential is employed and is numerically solved in the mean-field approximation. We find that the chiral symmetry breaking enhances in comparison with the original sigma model. Two sets of parameterization are investigated in the present model. We find that increasing coupling constant enhances the breaking symmetry while increasing sigma mass inhibits enhancing chiral broken vacuum state. A comparison with the Numbu-Jona-Lasini…
The bosonized Chiral Schwinger model (CSM) is quantized on the light-front (LF). The physical Hilbert space of CSM is obtained directly once the constraints on the LF phase space are eliminated. The discussion of the degenerate vacua and the absence in the CSM of the $θ$-vacua, as found in the Schwinger model (SM), becomes straightforward. The differences in the structures of the the mass excitations and the vacua in these gauge theories are displayed transparently. The procedure followed is the one used successfully in the previous works for describing the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) …
In this work we study the production of electron-positron pairs from vacuum in presence of a field resulting from the collision of two counter-propagating FEL beams that undergo Gaussian amplitude fluctuations. Our work aims to the extension of previous works based on the standing wave hypothesis, by including the inherent stochastic amplitude fluctuations of the individual FEL beams. As shown, depending on the order of the process, a large non-linear enhancement in the number of created pairs can be expected over a big intensity window in the multi-photon regime. Vacuum pair creation in view …
Recently the dynamically assisted Schwinger mechanism, i.e., electron-positron pair production from vacuum by a combination of laser pulses with different time scales has been proposed. The corresponding results, which suggest that the rate of produced pairs is significantly enhanced by dynamical effects, are verified. Employing the framework of quantum kinetic theory intrinsically enables us to additionally provide momentum space information on the generated positron spectrum.
\noindent The well-known exact solution of the massless Schwinger model can be simply obtained by perturbing around a vacuum without the Dirac sea of filled negative energy states. The unusual vacuum structure changes the sign of the $iε$ prescription at the negative energy pole of the free fermion propagator. Consequently, all convergent fermion loop integrals vanish. The logarithmically divergent two-point loop gives a mass $e/\sqrtπ$ to the photon, which turns into the free pointlike boson of the Schwinger model. We discuss the possiblity of using corresponding expansions to describe charge…
By comparing the two- and three-flavor Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) models, we demonstrate that the naively expected vacuum superconductivity (VSC) in constant magnetic field ${\bf B}=B\hat z$ is disfavored due to the splitting magnetic catalysis effect (MCE) to chiral condensates with different quark flavors. Based on the simple two-flavor NJL model, we illuminate, in the lowest Landau level approximation, the similar origins of $π^0$ and $\barρ^+_1$ ($ρ^+$ meson with spin $S_z=1$) mass reductions with smaller $B$ and their different features at larger $B$. With the full Landau levels, the two-f…
In this paper, we give formal results of Schwinger pair production correction in thermal systems with external background field by using the evolution operator method of thermo field dynamics, where especially tree level correction of thermal photons is considered with linear response approaches by an effective mass shift. We consider initial systems in two types of vacuums as zero temperature and thermal vacuum, respectively, with correction of thermal photons is or not included. As an example we give results of these corrections to pair production for a constant external background electric …
We systematically study the chiral symmetry breaking and restoration in the presence of a pure electric field in the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model at finite temperature and baryon chemical potential. In addition, we also study the effect of the chiral phase transition on the charged pair production due to the Schwinger mechanism. For these purposes, a general formalism for parallel electric and magnetic fields is developed at finite temperature and chemical potential for the first time. In the pure electric field limit $B\rightarrow0$, we compute the order parameter, the transverse-to-longit…
We study the dynamical Schwinger effect in the vacuum excitation of the electron-positron plasma under action of a "laser pulse" of the simplest configuration: a linearly polarized, time-dependent and spatially homogeneous electric field. Methodical basis of this investigation is the kinetic equation which is an exact consequence of the basic equations of motion of QED in the considered field model. In the present work we investigate some features of the residual electron-positron plasma and the transient process of its formation.
The operator-product expansion(OPE) could be employed to obtain the lowest-order, nonlocal quark scalar condensate component of gluon vacuum polarization. In particular, nonlocal quark scalar condensate can be calculated by solving Dyson-Schwinger Equation(DSE) of QCD. Then, field-theoretic aspects of the gluon vacuum polarization and nonperturbative gluon propagator will be considered in the Landau gauge of the Lorentz gauge fixing. The gluon propagator we obtained is finite in the infrared domain where the single gluon mass $m_g$ can be determined. Our results of the ratio $m_{g}/Λ_{QCD}$ th…
A detector undergoing a huge acceleration measures a thermal distribution with the Unruh temperature out of the Minkowski vacuum. Though such huge accelerations occur naturally in astrophysics and gravity, one may design untraintense laser facility to detect the Unruh effect and simulate laboratory astrophysics. We derive the QED vacuum polarization and the vacuum persistence amplitude as well as the Schwinger pair creation in an accelerating frame when a constant electric field exists in the Minkowski spacetime. We advance a thermal interpretation of Schwinger pair creation in the Rindler spa…
In a background of a very strong magnetic field a quantum vacuum may turn into a new phase characterized by anisotropic electromagnetic superconductivity. The phase transition should take place at a critical magnetic field of the hadronic strength (B_c \approx 10^{16} Tesla or eB_c \approx 0.6 GeV^2). The transition occurs due to an interplay between electromagnetic and strong interactions: virtual quark-antiquark pairs popup from the vacuum and create -- due to the presence of the intense magnetic field -- electrically charged and electrically neutral spin-one condensates with quantum numbers…
We construct and solve the Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) of quark propagator with a parameterized metric, which connects the Euclidean metric with the Minkowskian one. We show, in some models, the Minkowskian vacuum is different from the Euclidean vacuum. The usual analytic continuation of Green function does not make sense in these cases. While with the algorithm we proposed and the quark-gluon vertex ansatz which preserves the Ward-Takahashi identity, the vacuum keeps being unchanged in the evolution of the metric. In this case, analytic continuation becomes meaningful and can be fully carr…
In this paper, we extend the calculation of tensor vacuum susceptibility in the rainbow-ladder approximation of the Dyson-Schwinger (DS) approach in [Y.M.Shi, K.P.Wu, W.M.Sun, H.S.Zong, J.L.Ping, Phys. Lett. B $\bf{639}$, 248 (2006)] to that of employing the Ball-Chiu (BC) vertex. The dressing effect of the quark-gluon vertex on the tensor vacuum susceptibility is investigated. Our results show that compared with its rainbow-ladder approximation value, the tensor vacuum susceptibility obtained in the BC vertex approximation is reduced by about 10%. This shows that the dressing effect of the qu…
In this talk I shall describe an extension of the quantum-vacuum approach to sonoluminescence proposed several years ago by J.Schwinger. We shall first consider a model calculation based on Bogolubov coefficients relating the QED vacuum in the presence of an expanded bubble to that in the presence of a collapsed bubble. In this way we shall derive an estimate for the spectrum and total energy emitted. This latter will be shown to be proportional to the volume of space over which the refractive index changes, as Schwinger predicted. After this preliminary check we shall deal with the physical c…
In this work we demonstrate that non-zero neutrino masses can be generated from gravitational interactions. We solve the Schwinger-Dyson equations to find a non-trivial vacuum thereby determining the scale of the neutrino condensate and the number of new particle degrees of freedom required for gravitationally induced dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. We show for minimal beyond the Standard Model particle content, the scale of the condensation occurs close to the Planck scale.
This is a review of the recent progress on a holographic description of the Schwinger effect. In 2011, Semenoff and Zarembo proposed a scenario to study the Schwinger effect in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The production rate of quark anti-quark pairs was computed in the Coulomb phase. In particular, it provided the critical value of external electric field, above which particles are freely created and the vacuum decays catastrophically. Then the potential analysis in the holographic approach was invented and it enabled us to study the Schwinger effect in the confining phase as w…
We modify action in an external electromagnetic field to include effects of virtual axion-like particle (ALP) excitations. A measurable addition to QED-Euler-Heisenberg-Schwinger (EHS) action is obtained and incorporated into experimental constraints placed on ALP mass and coupling to two photons. The regime of these constraints in which the ALP vacuum effect surpasses the EHS effect is characterized. We show that probing of the virtual vacuum effect offers an alternative method in search for physics related to ALPs.
Using the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model in the D0-D4 background, we holographically compute the vacuum decay rate of the Schwinger effect in this model. Our calculation contains the influence of the D0-brane density which could be identified as the $θ$ angle or chiral potential in QCD. Under the strong electromagnetic fields, the instability appears due to the creation of quark-antiquark pairs and the associated decay rate can be obtained by evaluating the imaginary part of the effective Euler-Heisenberg action which is identified as the action of the probe brane with a constant electromagnetic …
We study massive charged particle production from the vacuum confined between two vibrating plates in the presence of a strong electric field. We analytically derive a formula for the production number based on the perturbation theory in the Furry picture, and show that the Schwinger mechanism by the strong electric field and the dynamical Casimir effect by the vibration assist with each other to dramatically enhance the production number by orders of the magnitude.
We investigate the phase structure of dense QCD using the Schwinger-Dyson equation (SDE) with the improved ladder approximation in the Landau gauge. We use the gluon propagator with the electric mode corrected by Debye screening and the magnetic mode corrected by Landau damping. We solve the coupled SDE for the Majorana masses of the quark and antiquark (separately from the SDE for the Dirac mass) in the low density and intermediate density regions. In the low density region, both the SDEs for the Majorana masses and the Dirac mass have nontrivial solutions that correspond to the color symmetr…
We study Schwinger pair creation of charged Kaluza-Klein particles from a static KK electric field. We find that the gravitational backreaction of the electric field on the geometry - which is incorporated via the electric KK Melvin solution - prevents the electrostatic potential from overcoming the rest mass of the KK particles, thus impeding the tunneling mechanism which is often thought of as responsible for the pair creation. However, we find that pair creation still occurs with a finite rate formally similar to the classic Schwinger result, but via an apparently different mechanism, invol…
We study the impact of steady, homogeneous, and external parallel electric and magnetic field strength ($eE\parallel eB$), on the chiral symmetry breaking-restoration and confinement-deconfinement phase transitions. We also sketch the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at finite temperature $T$ and in the presence of background fields. Our unified formalism for this study is based on the Schwinger-Dyson equations, symmetry preserving vector-vector contact interaction model of quarks, and the proper time regularization scheme. At $T=0$, in the purely magnetic case ($eE\rightarrow 0$)…
Digital Quantum Simulation of Nonequilibrium Dynamics in the Schwinger Model under a Strong External Electric Field
State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Institute of Quantum Matter, South China Normal University（华南师范大学量子物质研究院核物理与技术国家重点实验室）；Key Laboratory of Atomic and Subatomic Structure and Quantum Control (MOE), Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Quantum Matter（原子与亚原子结构及量子控制教育部重点实验室粤港澳量子物质联合实验室）；Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Structure and Fundamental Interactions of Matter, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nuclear Science（广东省物质结构与基本相互作用卓越研究中心广东省核科学重点实验室）
The properties of the forced oscillations of electron-positron plasma (EPP) generated from vacuum under the action of a short laser pulse are considered. Calculating the density of the conduction and polarization currents within the quantum kinetic approach, we demonstrate the presence of plasma oscillations at the frequency of the external field and its odd harmonics. It is expected that radiation generated by these plasma oscillations can be observed outside the interaction region, for example, outside the focal spot of two counterpropagating laser beams, and can serve as an indicator of the…
We study the production of chiral fermions in a background of a strong non-abelian gauge field with a non-vanishing Chern-Pontryagin density. We discuss both pair production analogous to the Schwinger effect as well as asymmetric production through the chiral anomaly, sourced by the Chern-Pontryagin density. In abelian gauge theories one may nicely understand these processes by considering that the fermion dispersion relation forms discrete Landau levels. Here we extend this analysis to a non-abelian gauge theory, considering an intrinsically non-abelian isotropic and homogeneous SU(2) gauge f…
Ever since Schwinger published his influential paper [J. Schwinger, Phys. Rev. \textbf{82}, 664 (1951)], it has been unanimously accepted that the vacuum is stable in the presence of an electromagnetic plane wave. However, we advance an analysis that indicates this statement is not rigorously valid in a real situation, where thermal effects are present. We show that the thermal vacuum, in the presence of a single plane-wave field, even in the limit of zero frequency (a constant crossed field), decays into electron-positron pairs. Interestingly, the pair-production rate is found to depend nonpe…
We obtain the QCD quark condensate from consideration of unquenched quark dynamics in Dyson-Schwinger gluon vacuum. We consider the non-local extension of the condensate and determine the quark virtuality. We also obtain the condensate-driven contribution of the non-perturbative QCD to Euler--Heisenberg Lagrangian of QED in external electromagnetic fields.
Particle production induced by a time-dependent background is well understood as the projection of the time-evolved initial state onto a set of final states. While the asymptotic initial and final states are well defined in the usual way, the definition of particles and antiparticles at intermediate times in the presence of external fields is ambiguous. These external fields moreover induce divergences which require regularization. In this paper we clarify some subtleties in the computation of transient effects in physical quantities for fermions in a homogeneous axion background, including Sc…
The low energy effective field model for the multilayer graphene (at ABC stacking) in external Electric field is considered. The Schwinger pair creation rate and the vacuum persistence probability are calculated using the semi - classical approach.
We study the vacuum pair production by a time-dependent strong electric field based on the exact WKB analysis. We identify the generic structure of a Stokes graph for systems with the vacuum pair production and show that the number of produced pairs is given by a product of connection matrices for Stokes segments connecting pairs of turning points. We derive an explicit formula for the number of produced pairs, assuming the semi-classical limit. The obtained formula can be understood as a generalization of the divergent asymptotic series method by Berry, and is consistent with other semi-class…
In this letter, we clarify the algebra expression for calculating the quark condensate based on the non-perturbative quark propagator calculated through Schwinger-Dyson equation. The quark condensates, which characterize the low energy QCD vacuum, should not get a divergent quantity at large energy scale; the re-normalization group evolution behaviour at large energy scale therefore should be interpreted as "smeared collective effects" for it contains both perturbative and non-perturbative parts. We prefer the integral expression and get a quantity which is both convergent and scale dependent.
We investigate non-perturbative pair production from vacuum (the Schwinger effect) in the focal region of two counter-propagating, ultra-short laser pulses with sub-cycle structure. We use the quantum kinetic formulation to calculate the momentum spectrum of created particles and show the extreme sensitivity to the laser frequency $ω$, the pulse length $τ$ and the carrier-envelope absolute phase $ϕ$. We apply this formalism to both fermions and bosons to illustrate the influence of quantum statistics in this type of electric background field.
We investigate electron-positron pair production from vacuum for short laser pulses with sub-cycle structure, in the nonperturbative regime (Schwinger pair production). We use the non-equilibrium quantum kinetic approach, and show that the momentum spectrum of the created electron-positron pairs is extremely sensitive to the sub-cycle dynamics -- depending on the laser frequency $ω$, the pulse length $τ$, and the carrier phase $ϕ$ -- and shows several distinctive new signatures. This observation could help not only in the design of laser pulses to optimize the experimental signature of Schwing…
