Chirp effects on pair production in oscillating electric fields with spatial inhomogeneity

TL;DR

This study investigates how chirp parameters influence vacuum pair creation in inhomogeneous oscillating electric fields using the Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism, revealing sensitivity of particle spectra to field parameters and the validity of local density approximation.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the effects of chirp and spatial inhomogeneity on pair production, extending understanding beyond homogeneous field models.

Findings

Particle momentum spectra are sensitive to spatial scale and chirp in rapidly oscillating fields.

Chirp effects are prominent at large spatial extents in slowly oscillating fields.

Local density approximation remains valid in the quasihomogeneous limit for all field profiles studied.

Abstract

Dirac-Heisenberg-Wigner formalism is used to study chirp effects on the vacuum pair creation under inhomogeneous electric fields. For rapidly oscillating electric fields, the particle momentum spectrum is sensitive to both of the spatial scale and the chirp parameter, and the external field width has less significant effect for the maximally large chirp. For slowly oscillating electric fields, chirp effects could be identified at large spatial extents and the carrier phase plays a significant role reflecting chirp effects even at small spatial scales. We also notice that, the local density approximation holds for all external field profiles considered in this work at the quasihomogeneous limit allowing one to use arguments from homogeneous scenarios to analyze inhomogeneous results.