Schwinger mechanism in the SU(3) Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with an electric field

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Schwinger mechanism in the SU(3) Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model under electric fields, analyzing how temperature and density influence quark masses and pair production rates, with new analytical expressions for numerical studies.

Contribution

It introduces analytical formulas for the SU(3) NJL model with an electric field, including the 't Hooft determinant, and compares results with the SU(2) model.

Findings

Pseudocritical electric field decreases with temperature.

Higher pair production rate in SU(3) compared to SU(2).

Analytical expressions facilitate numerical evaluations.

Abstract

In this work we study the electrized quark matter under finite temperature and density conditions in the context of the SU(2) and SU(3) Nambu--Jona-Lasinio models. To this end, we evaluate the effective quark masses and the Schwinger quark-antiquark pair production rate. For the SU(3) NJL model we incorporate in the Lagrangian the 't Hooft determinant and we present a set of analytical expressions more convenient for numerical evaluations. We predict a decrease of the pseudocritical electric field with the increase of the temperature for both models and a more prominent production rate for the SU(3) model when compared to the SU(2).