Vacuum energy of one-dimensional supercritical Dirac-Coulomb system

TL;DR

This paper investigates nonperturbative vacuum polarization effects in a supercritical Coulomb system in 1+1 dimensions, revealing that vacuum energy can decrease significantly, contrasting with perturbative predictions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of vacuum energy behavior in supercritical Coulomb systems, highlighting nonperturbative effects in 1+1 dimensions.

Findings

Vacuum energy can decrease to large negative values in the supercritical regime.

Vacuum charge density exhibits nonperturbative behavior.

Behavior differs markedly from perturbative quadratic growth.

Abstract

Nonperturbative vacuum polarization effects are explored for a supercritical Coulomb source with $Z>Z_{cr}$ in 1+1 D. Both the vacuum charge density $\rho_{vac}(x)$ and vacuum energy $E_{vac}$ are considered. It is shown that in the overcritical region the behavior of vacuum energy could be significantly different from perturbative quadratic growth up to decrease reaching large negative values.