Schwinger effect in inhomogeneous electric fields

Understand

The vacuum of quantum electrodynamics is unstable against the formation of many-body states in the presence of an external electric field, manifesting itself as the creation of electron-positron pairs (Schwinger effect).

• This effect has been a long-standing but still unobserved prediction as the generation of the required field strengths has not been feasible so far.
• However, due to the advent of a new generation of high-intensity laser systems such as the European XFEL or the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI), this effect might eventually become observable within the next decades.
• Based on the equal-time Wigner formalism, various aspects of the Schwinger effect in electric fields showing both temporal and spatial variations are investigated.