Generalized Schwinger effect and particle production in an expanding universe

Understand

We discuss several aspects of particle production in: (a) time dependent electric field and (b) expanding Friedmann background.

• In the first part of the paper, we provide an algebraic mapping between the differential equations describing these two phenomena.
• This mapping allows a direct comparison between (a) and (b) and we highlight several interesting features of both cases using this approach.
• We determine the form of the (equivalent) electric field corresponding to different Friedmann spacetimes and discover, for example, a time-dependent electric field which, in a specific limit, leads to a Planck's spectrum of particles.