Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study the Schwinger effect in strongly coupled theories with an anisotropic scaling symmetry in time and spatial direction. We consider Lifshitz and hyperscaling violation theories and use their gravity duals. It is shown that the shape of the potential barrier depends on the parameters of theory. One concludes that the production rate for the pair creation of particle and anti-particle will not be the same as the relativistic case.
We consider the Schwinger effect in confining phase by using a holographic setup. The potential analysis is performed for the confining D3-brane and D4-brane backgrounds. We find the critical electric field above which there is no potential barrier and the system becomes unstable catastrophically. An intriguing point is that no Schwinger effect occurs when the electric field is smaller than the confining string tension.
We consider $R^4$ corrections to the holographic Schwinger effect in an AdS black hole background and a confining D3-brane background. The potential between a test particle pair are performed for both backgrounds. We find there is no potential barrier in the critical electric field, which means that the system becomes catastrophically unstable. It is shown that for both backgrounds increasing the inverse 't Hooft coupling parameter $1/λ$ enhances the Schwinger effect. We also discuss the possible relation between the Schwinger effect and the viscosity-entropy ratio $η/s$ in strong coupling.
We consider universal aspects of a holographic Schwinger effect in general backgrounds with an external homogeneous electric field. The argument is based on the potential analysis developed in our previous work. Under some conditions, there always exists a critical electric field, above which the potential barrier vanishes and the system becomes unstable catastrophically. The critical value agrees with the one obtained from the Dirac-Born-Infeld action. For general confining backgrounds, we show that the Schwinger effect does not occur when the electric field is weaker than the confining strin…
We study the Schwinger effect with a moving D3-brane in a $\mathcal{N}$=4 SYM plasma with the aid of AdS/CFT correspondence. We discuss the test particle pair moving transverse and parallel to the plasma wind respectively. It is found that for both cases the presence of velocity tends to increase the Schwinger effect. In addition, the velocity has a stronger influence on the Schwinger effect when the pair moves transverse to the plasma wind rather than parallel.
We perform the potential analysis in holographic Schwinger effect in a deformed anti-de Sitter (AdS) background with backreaction due to the gluon condensate. We determine the potential by analyzing the classical string action attaching on a probe D3-brane sitting at an intermediate position in the bulk AdS space. It is found that the inclusion of the gluon condensate reduces the production rate, reverse to the effect of the temperature. Also, we evaluate the critical electric field by Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action.
We use the method of evaluating the decay rate in terms of the imaginary part of a probe brane action to study the holographic Schwinger effect. In the confining D3-branes case, we find that the Schwinger effect occurs at energy scales higher than the Kaluza-Klein mass, indicating the absence of such effect when the dual gauge field theory can be regarded as an 2+1 dimensional theory. This property is independent of the configuration of the probe brane. In the case of D3-branes with a B field dual to a noncommutative super Yang-Mills theory, we study how the decay rate is affected by the nonco…
The consequences of the Schwinger effect for conductivity is computed for strong coupling systems using holography. The one loop diagram on the flavor brane introduces an $O({λ\over N_c})$ imaginary part in the effective action for a Maxwell flavor gauge field. This in turn introduces a real conductivity in an otherwise insulating phase of the boundary theory. Moreover in certain regions of parameter space the differential conductivity is negative. This is computed in the context of the Sakai-Sugimoto model.
We perform the potential analysis for the holographic Schwinger effect in a deformed $AdS_5$ model with conformal invariance broken by a background dilaton. We evaluate the static potential by analyzing the classical action of a string attaching the rectangular Wilson loop on a probe D3 brane sitting at an intermediate position in the bulk AdS space. We observe that the inclusion of chemical potential tends to enhance the production rate, reverse to the effect of confining scale. Also, we calculate the critical electric field by Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action.
We consider a generalization of the holographic Schwinger effect proposed by Semenoff and Zarembo to the case with constant electric and magnetic fields. There are two ways to turn on magnetic fields, i) the probe D3-brane picture and ii) the string world-sheet picture. In the former picture, magnetic fields both perpendicular and parallel to the electric field are activated by a Lorentz transformation and a spatial rotation. In the latter one, the classical solutions of the string world-sheet corresponding to circular Wilson loops are generalized to contain two additional parameters encoding …
In this paper, we consider a deformed AdS background and study effect of deformation parameter on the pair production rate of the Schwinger effect. The electrostatic potential is important for the pair production in the holographic Schwinger effect. In this paper, we analyze the electrostatic potential in a deformed AdS background and investigate the effect of deformation parameter which may be useful to test of AdS/QCD. In the case of zero temperature we find that larger value of the deformation parameter leads to a smaller value of separation length of the test particles on the probe. Also w…
We construct a holographic dual of the Schwinger-Keldysh effective action for the dissipative low-energy dynamics of relativistic charged matter at strong coupling in a fixed thermal background. To do so, we use a mixed signature bulk spacetime whereby an eternal asymptotically anti-de Sitter black hole is glued to its Euclidean counterpart along an initial time slice in a way to match the desired double-time contour of the dual field theory. Our results are consistent with existing literature and can be regarded as a fully-ab initio derivation of a Schwinger-Keldysh effective action. In addit…
In this note we point out that the recently proposed bulk dual of an entangled pair of a quark and an anti-quark corresponds to the Lorentzian continuation of the tunneling instanton describing Schwinger pair creation in the dual field theory. This observation supports and further explains the claim by Jensen & Karch that the bulk dual of an EPR pair is a string with a wormhole on its world sheet. We suggest that this constitutes an AdS/CFT realization of the creation of a Wheeler wormhole.
We consider the phenomenon of spontaneous pair production in presence of an external electric field for noncommutative Yang Mills theories. Using Maldacena's holographic conjecture the threshold electric field for pair production is computed from the quark-antiquark potential for noncommutative theories. As an effect of noncommutativity, the threshold electric field is seen to be smaller than its commutative counterpart. We also estimate the correction to the pair production rate of quark-antiquark pairs to the first order of the noncommutative deformation parameter. Our result bears resemblan…
We study the instability, for the supersymmetric Yang-Mills (SYM) theories, caused by the external electric field through the imaginary part of the action of the D7 probe brane, which is embedded in the background of type IIB theory. This instability is related to the Schwinger effect, namely to the quark pair production due to the external electric field, for the $SU(N_c)$ SYM theories. In this holographic approach, it is possible to calculate the Schwinger effect for various phases of the theories. Here we give the calculation for ${\cal N}=2$ SYM theory and the analysis is extended to the f…
We analyze electrostatic potentials in the holographic Schwinger effect. The potential barrier for the pair production is estimated by a static potential consisting of static mass energies, an electric potential from an external electric-field, and the Coulomb potential between a particle and an antiparticle. Given that the Coulomb potential is supposed to be evaluated by the minimal surface attaching on the conformal boundary as usual, the critical field, where the potential barrier vanishes, exhibits a deviation of 30% from the one obtained from the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action. We reconsi…
The Schwinger effect in the presence of instantons is considered in this paper. Using AdS/CFT correspondence in the near horizon limit of the D3+D($-1$)-brane background, we calculate the total potential of a quark-antiquark pair in an external electric field. It is shown that instantons tend to suppress the pair creation effect and increase the critical electric field above which the pairs are produced freely without any suppression. Interestingly, no other critical electric field, common for all confining field theories, is observed here at finite temperature. However, as expected we find su…
We study $R^2$ corrections to the holographic Schwinger effect in an AdS black hole background and a confining D3-brane background, respectively. The potential analysis for these backgrounds is presented. The critical values for the electric field are obtained. It is shown that for both backgrounds increasing the Gauss-Bonnet parameter the Schwinger effect is enhanced. Moreover, the results provide an estimate of how the Schwinger effect changes with the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio, $η/s$, at strong coupling.
We extend Douglas' solution of the problem of finding minimal surfaces to anti-de Sitter space. The case of a circle as a boundary contour is elaborated. We discuss applications to ${\cal N}=4$ super Yang-Mills: a circular Wilson loop and the Schwinger process, where we calculate the $1/\sqrtλ$ correction to the critical value of constant electric field.
We develop a prescription for computing real-time correlation functions defined on a Schwinger-Keldysh contour for non-equilibrium systems using gravity. The prescription involves a new analytic continuation procedure in a black hole geometry which can be dynamical. For a system with a slowly varying horizon, the continuation enables computation of the Schwinger-Keldysh generating functional using derivative expansion, drastically simplifying calculations. We illustrate the prescription with two-point functions for a scalar operator. We then use it to derive from gravity the recently proposed …
We perform the potential analysis for the holographic Schwinger effect in a rotating deformed AdS black-hole background. We calculate the total potential of a quark-antiquark ($Q\bar{Q}$) pair in an external electric field and evaluate the critical electric field from Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action. It is shown that the inclusion of angular velocity decreases the potential barrier thus enhancing the Schwinger effect, opposite to the effect of the confining scale. Moreover, by increasing angular velocity decreases the critical electric field above which the pairs are produced freely without any…
According to the gauge-gravity duality, we systematically study the Schwinger effect and electric instability with anisotropy in a top-down holographic approach. The anisotropic black brane and bubble (soliton) background in IIB supergravity are employed and the dual theories in these backgrounds are expected to be anisotropic theory at finite temperature and anisotropic theory with confinement respectively. Then performing the potential analysis, we find due to the anisotropy, the potential barrier behaves oppositely with parallel and perpendicular electric fields, and this behavior agrees wi…
At strong-coupling and weak-field limit, the scalar Schwinger effect is studied by the field-theoretical method of worldline instantons for dynamic fields of single-pulse and sinusoidal types. By examining the Wilson loop along the closed instanton path, corrections to the results obtained from weak-coupling approximations are discovered. They show that this part of contribution for production rate becomes dominant as Keldysh parameter increases, it makes the consideration at strong coupling turn out to be indispensable for dynamic fields. Moreover a breaking of weak-field condition similar to…
We construct effective field theory for SU(2) isospin charge diffusion, based on holographic Schwinger-Keldysh contour arXiv:2008.01269. The holographic model consists of a probe SU(2) gauge field in a doubled Schwarzschild-AdS$_5$ geometry. Accurate to first order in derivative expansion, we analytically compute the effective action up to quartic order in hydrodynamical fields. The effective theory contains both non-Gaussianity for noises and nonlinear interactions between noises and dynamical variables. Moreover, the effective theory captures both thermal and quantum fluctuations, which perf…
We extend the holographic Schwinger-Keldysh prescription introduced in arXiv:1812.08785 to charged black branes, with a view towards studying Hawking radiation in these backgrounds. Equivalently we study real-time fluctuations of the dual CFT held at finite temperature and finite chemical potential. We check our prescription using charged Dirac probe fields. We solve the Dirac equation in a boundary derivative expansion extending the results in arXiv:2011.07039. The Schwinger-Keldysh correlators derived using this prescription automatically satisfy the appropriate KMS relations with Fermi-Dira…
We study tunneling pair creation of W-Bosons by an external electric field on the Coulomb branch of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We use AdS/CFT holography to find a generalization of Schwinger's formula for the pair production rate to the strong coupling, planar limit which includes the exchange of virtual massless particles to all orders. We find that the pair creation formula has an upper critical electric field beyond which the process is no longer exponentially suppressed. The value of the critical field is identical to that which occurs in the Born-Infeld action of probe D3-brane…
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 study the effect of higher-derivative terms on holographic Schwinger effect by introducing the Gauss-Bonnet term in the gravity sector. Anti-de Sitter (AdS) soliton background is considered which is dual to confining phase of the boundary field theory. By calculating the potential between the produced pair, we find that larger Gauss-Bonnet factor $λ$ makes the pair lighter. We apply numerical method to calculate the production rate for various cases. The results show that the Gauss-Bonnet term enhances the production rate. The critical behaviors near the two critical values of the electric …
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we construct the holographic dual of a tunneling instanton describing Schwinger pair creation in de Sitter space. Our approach allows us to extract the critical value of the electric field for which the potential barrier disappears, rendering the vacuum unstable. In addition, we compute the large-$λ$, large-$N_c$ corrections to the nucleation rate and we find that it agrees with previous expectations based on perturbative computations. As a by-product of this investigation, we study the causal structure of the string dual to the nucleated pair as seen by diffe…
Worldline holography states that within the framework of the worldline approach to quantum field theory, sources of a quantum field theory over Mink$_4$ naturally form a field theory over AdS$_5$ {\sl to all orders} in the elementary fields and in the sources of arbitrary spin. (Such correspondences are also available for other pairs of spacetimes, not only Mink$_4\leftrightarrow\mathrm{AdS}_5$.) Schwinger's proper time of the worldline formalism is automatically grouped with the physical four spacetime dimensions into an AdS$_5$ geometry. We show that the worldline holographic effective actio…
The decay of the vacuum due to the presence of an electric field is expected to be delayed by a confining force. We demonstrate that this feature is captured by our model [arXiv:1404.0011 [hep-ph],arXiv:1312.5718 [hep-ph]] for hadrons based on the worldline formalism. Our model, while based entirely in four-dimensional quantum field theory, shares many features with holographic approaches: it appears intrinsically quantum mechanical; as an auxiliary fifth dimension Schwinger's proper time combines with the physical four spacetime dimensions into an AdS$_5$ geometry; conformal-symmetry breaking…
We study the holographic Schwinger effect with magnetic field at RHIC and LHC energies by using the AdS/CFT correspondence. We consider both weak and strong magnetic field cases with $B\ll T^2$ and $B\gg T^2$ solutions respectively. Firstly, we calculate separating length of the particle pairs at finite magnetic field. It is found that for both weak and strong magnetic field solutions the maximum value of separating length decreases with the increase of magnetic field , which can be inferred that the virtual electron-positron pairs become real particles more easily. We also find that the magne…
We compute Schwinger-Keldysh effective action for a relativistic heavy quark (with constant background velocity) in strongly coupled N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma. The holographic dual description involves a noisy trailing string moving in Schwarzschild-AdS5 black brane. The noise is caused by Hawking radiation emitted from string worldsheet horizon. Besides quadractic terms, the effective action contains cubic interactions, which are entirely induced by the constant background velocity. The nonlinear fluctuation-dissipation relations for three-point functions are discussed based on h…
We study defects in non-relativistic conformal field theories. As in the well-studied case of relativistic conformal defects, we find that a useful tool to organize correlation functions is the defect operator expansion (dOPE). We analyze how the dOPE is implemented in theories with a holographic dual, highlighting some interesting aspects of the operator/state mapping in non-relativistic holography.
Using the gauge-gravity duality, we study the holographic Schwinger effect by performing the potential analysis on the confining D3- and D4-brane background with D-instantons then evaluate the pair production/decay rate by taking account into a fundamental string and a single flavor brane respectively. The two confining backgrounds with D-instantons are obtained from the black D(-1)-D3 and D0-D4 solution with a double Wick rotation. The total potential and pair production/decay rate in the Schwinger effect are calculated numerically by examining the NG action of a fundamental string and the DB…
We study a general D-dimensional Schwarzschild-type black brane solution of the Einstein-dilaton theory and derive, by using the holographic renormalization, its thermodynamics consistent with the geometric results. Using the membrane paradigm, we calculate the several hydrodynamic transport coefficients and compare them with the results obtained by the Kubo formula, which shows the self-consistency of the gauge/gravity duality in the relativistic non-conformal theory. In order to understand more about the relativistic non-conformal theory, we further investigate the binding energy, drag force…
We initiate the study of open quantum field theories using holographic methods. Specifically, we consider a quantum field theory (the system) coupled to a holographic field theory at finite temperature (the environment). We investigate the effects of integrating out the holographic environment with an aim of obtaining an effective dynamics for the resulting open quantum field theory. The influence functionals which enter this open effective action are determined by the real-time (Schwinger-Keldysh) correlation functions of the holographic thermal environment. To evaluate the latter, we exploit…
We have recently presented a geometry dual to a Schwinger-Keldysh closed time contour, with two equal $β/2$ length Euclidean sections, which can be thought of as dual to the Thermo Field Dynamics formulation of the boundary CFT. In this work we study non-perturbative holographic excitations of the thermal vacuum by turning on asymptotic Euclidean sources. In the large-$N$ approximation the states are found to be thermal coherent state and we manage to compute its eigenvalues. We pay special attention to the high temperature regime where the manifold is built from pieces of Euclidean and Lorent…
We study the thermodynamics and non-relativistic hydrodynamics of the holographic fluid on a finite cutoff surface in the Gauss-Bonnet gravity. It is shown that the isentropic flow of the fluid is equivalent to a radial component of gravitational field equations. We use the non-relativistic fluid expansion method to study the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton system with a negative cosmological constant, and obtain the holographic incompressible forced Navier-Stokes equations of the dual fluid at AdS boundary and at a finite cutoff surface, respectively. The concrete forms of external forces are given.
We study the Schwinger pair production in confining theories. The production rate in an external electric field E is numerically evaluated by using the holographic description. There exist two kinds of critical values of the electric field, i) E=E_c, above which there is no potential barrier and particles are freely generated, ii) E=E_s, below which the confining string tension dominates the electric field and the pair production does not occur. We argue the universal exponents associated with the critical behaviors.
We study a fourth-order derivative scalar field configuration in a fixed Lifshitz background. Using an auxiliary field we rewrite the equations of motion as two coupled second order equations. We specialize to the limit that the mass of the scalar field degenerates with that of the auxiliary field and show that logarithmic modes appear. Using non-relativistic holographic methods we calculate the two-point correlation functions of the boundary operators in this limit and find evidence for a non-relativistic logarithmic conformal field theory at the boundary.
We consider a holographic set-up where relativistic invariance is broken by a chemical potential, and a non-abelian internal symmetry is broken spontaneously. We use the tool of holographic renormalization in order to infer what can be learned purely by analytic boundary considerations. We find that the expected Ward identities are correctly reproduced. In particular, we obtain the identity which implies the non-commutation of a pair of broken charges, which leads to the presence of Goldstone bosons with quadratic dispersion relations.
Superfluids support many different types of sound waves. We investigate the relation between the sound waves in a relativistic and a non-relativistic superfluid by using hydrodynamics to calculate the various sound speeds. Then, using a particular holographic scalar gravity realization of a strongly interacting superfluid, we compute first, second and fourth sound speeds as a function of the temperature. The relativistic low temperature results for second sound differ from Landau's well known prediction for the non-relativistic, incompressible case.
We use the concept of quantum entanglement to analyze the Schwinger effect on an entangled state of a qubit and a bosonic mode coupled with the electric field. As a consequence of the Schwinger production of particle-antiparticle pairs, the electric field decreases both the correlation and the entanglement between the qubit and the particle mode. This work exposes a profound difference between bosons and fermions. In the bosonic case, entanglement between the qubit and the antiparticle mode cannot be caused by the Schwinger effect on the preexisting entanglement between the qubit and the parti…
In this paper, based on the principles of gauge/gravity duality and considering the so called \textit{hydrodynamic} limit we compute various charge transport properties for a class of strongly coupled non relativistic CFTs corresponding to $ z=2 $ fixed point whose dual gravitational counter part could be realized as the consistent truncation of certain non relativistic $ Dp $ branes in the non extremal limit. From our analysis we note that unlike the case for the AdS black branes, the charge diffusion constant in the non relativistic background scales differently with the temperature. This sh…
