Pair production at the edge of the QED flux tube

TL;DR

This paper studies how inhomogeneous electric fields, inspired by QCD flux tubes, enhance electron-positron pair production, especially at the interface regions, differing from traditional uniform field models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that spatial inhomogeneity in electric fields significantly increases pair production yield and aligns with Heisenberg's prediction about particle creation at field boundaries.

Findings

Inhomogeneous fields produce more pairs than uniform fields.

Most particles are generated at the interface of the field profile.

Results support Heisenberg's prediction about boundary effects.

Abstract

We investigate the process of Abelian pair production in the presence of strong inhomogeneous and time-dependent external electric fields. The spatial dependence of the external field is motivated by a non-Abelian color flux tube in heavy-ion collisions. We show that the inhomogeneity significantly increase the particle yield compared to that in the commonly used models with a constant and homogeneous field. Moreover our results indicate that in contrast to the latter, most of the particles are produced at the interface of the field profile in accordance with Heisenberg's prediction.