Schwinger Pair Production at Finite Temperature in QED

TL;DR

This paper calculates the rate of particle-antiparticle pair production in quantum electrodynamics at finite temperature using the evolution operator method, accounting for vacuum, induced, and stimulated processes.

Contribution

It introduces a method to factorize the pair-production rate into zero-temperature mean number and initial thermal distribution for both bosons and fermions.

Findings

Pair-production rate factorizes into zero-temperature mean and thermal distribution.

Method applies to both scalar and spinor QED.

Provides a comprehensive finite-temperature pair-production framework.

Abstract

We use the evolution operator method to find the Schwinger pair-production rate at finite temperature in scalar and spinor QED by counting the vacuum production, the induced production and the stimulated annihilation from the initial ensemble. It is shown that the pair-production rate for each state is factorized into the mean number at zero temperature and the initial thermal distribution for bosons and fermions.