Schwinger effect in de Sitter space
- Departament de Física Fonamental i Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona (Spain)
- Laboratory for Quantum Gravity and Strings and Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Center, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7701 (South Africa)
- Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502 (Japan)
- Department of Physics, Kobe University, Kobe 657-8501 (Japan)
- Institute of Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155 (United States)
We consider Schwinger pair production in 1+1 dimensional de Sitter space, filled with a constant electric field E. This can be thought of as a model for describing false vacuum decay beyond the semiclassical approximation, where pairs of a quantum field φ of mass m and charge e play the role of vacuum bubbles. We find that the adiabatic ''in'' vacuum associated with the flat chart develops a space-like expectation value for the current J, which manifestly breaks the de Sitter invariance of the background fields. We derive a simple expression for J(E), showing that both ''upward'' and ''downward'' tunneling contribute to the build-up of the current. For heavy fields, with m{sup 2} >> eE,H{sup 2}, the current is exponentially suppressed, in agreement with the results of semiclassical instanton methods. Here, H is the inverse de Sitter radius. On the other hand, light fields with m || H lead to a phenomenon of infrared hyperconductivity, where a very small electric field mH∼
- OSTI ID:
- 22373668
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 04; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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