Schwinger effect and false vacuum decay as quantum-mechanical tunneling of a relativistic particle

TL;DR

This paper models the Schwinger effect and false vacuum decay as quantum tunneling problems of a relativistic particle in one-dimensional effective potentials, providing a unified and intuitive framework for estimating their rates.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified, quantum-mechanical tunneling approach to describe both phenomena using an effective potential dependent on a single variable.

Findings

Unified description of Schwinger effect and vacuum decay as tunneling

Effective potential approach simplifies rate estimates

Applicable to relativistic quantum mechanics scenarios

Abstract

We present a simple and intuitive description of both, the Schwinger effect and false vacuum decay through bubble nucleation, as tunneling problems in one-dimensional relativistic quantum mechanics. Both problems can be described by an effective potential that depends on a single variable of dimension length, which measures the separation of the particles in the Schwinger pair, or the radius of a bubble for the vacuum decay. We show that both problems can be described as tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics if one interprets this variable as the position of a relativistic particle with a suitably defined effective mass. The same bounce solution can be used to obtain reliable order of magnitude estimates for the rates of the Schwinger pair production and false vacuum decay.