Holographic Schwinger Effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-perturbative pair creation of W-Bosons in a strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theory using holography, revealing a critical electric field where pair production ceases to be exponentially suppressed.

Contribution

It generalizes Schwinger's pair production formula to strong coupling via AdS/CFT, including all virtual particle exchanges, and identifies a critical electric field matching the Born-Infeld prediction.

Findings

Pair creation rate is exponentially suppressed below a critical electric field.

A critical electric field exists where pair production ceases to be suppressed.

The critical field matches the Born-Infeld value for D3-branes.

Abstract

We study tunneling pair creation of W-Bosons by an external electric field on the Coulomb branch of N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We use AdS/CFT holography to find a generalization of Schwinger's formula for the pair production rate to the strong coupling, planar limit which includes the exchange of virtual massless particles to all orders. We find that the pair creation formula has an upper critical electric field beyond which the process is no longer exponentially suppressed. The value of the critical field is identical to that which occurs in the Born-Infeld action of probe D3-branes in the AdS5XS5 background.