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  • Open Access

Study of spin states in vacuum pair production in the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism

R. Z. Jiang1, Z. L. Li1,2,*, and Y. J. Li1,2,†

  • *Contact author: zlli@cumtb.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: lyj@aphy.iphy.ac.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 116009 – Published 4 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yx63-knk3

Abstract

A general spin-resolved momentum distribution of electron-positron pairs produced in strong external fields is derived by combining the covariant spin projection operator and the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism. The result shows that the spin-resolved and helicity-resolved momentum distributions given in previous literature are actually two special cases of it. By numerically studying pair production in a spatially homogeneous circularly polarized electric field with its rotation axis along the z axis, it is found that for any spin-direction unit vector, when the z component of the unit vector vanishes, the number densities of produced spin-up and spin-down particles are equal, while their momentum distributions have some asymmetry. When the z component of the unit vector is nonzero, there is a difference of 1–3 orders of magnitude in the number densities of spin-up and spin-down particles induced by angular momentum transfer in multiphoton absorption. Moreover, as the electric field strength increases or the field frequency decreases, the asymmetry between the spin-up and spin-down particle number densities decreases rapidly. These results offer an approach to study general spin states in vacuum pair production and enhance our understanding of angular momentum transfer from fields to matter in extreme environments.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 116009– Published 4 June, 2026
  • Received 7 October 2025
  • Accepted 27 March 2026
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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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