The Stokes Phenomenon and Schwinger Vacuum Pair Production in Time-Dependent Laser Pulses

Understand

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 of the recently computed [Phys.
• Rev.