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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Full counting statistics of Schwinger pair production and annihilation

Yusuke Nishida

  • Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan

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Phys. Rev. D 104, L031902 – Published 31 August, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.L031902

Abstract

We study the probability distribution of the number of particle and antiparticle pairs produced via the Schwinger effect when a uniform but time-dependent electric field is applied to noninteracting scalars or spinors initially at a thermodynamic equilibrium. We derive the formula for the characteristic function by employing techniques in mesoscopic physics, reflecting a close analogy between the Schwinger effect and mesoscopic tunneling transports. In particular, we find that the pair production in a medium is enhanced (suppressed) for scalars (spinors) due to the Bose stimulation (Pauli blocking). Furthermore, in addition to the production of accelerated pairs by the electric field, the annihilation of decelerated pairs is found to take place in a medium. Our formula allows us to extract the probability distributions in various situations, such as those obeying the generalized trinomial statistics for spin-momentum resolved counting and the bidirectional Poisson statistics for spin-momentum unresolved counting.

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Phys. Rev. D 104, L031902– Published 31 August, 2021
  • Received 17 June 2021
  • Accepted 19 July 2021
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

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