The open string pair production revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits open string pair production in a string theory framework, suggesting it could reveal insights about extra dimensions and dark matter beyond standard QED predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a string-theoretic model of pair production using D-branes, highlighting additional information beyond traditional QED that could be experimentally relevant.

Findings

Stringy pair production rate matches QED in weak fields

String theory provides extra insights into extra dimensions

Potential implications for dark matter detection

Abstract

The experimental efforts in testing the QED vacuum properties such as the Schwinger pair production in the presence of a strong electric field have so far not been successful. This raises a potential possibility regarding if the usual QED vacuum picture is a complete one. In this paper, we address this possibility by taking our own (1 + 3)-dimensional world as a visible D3 brane with a nearby (hidden) D3, placed parallel at a separation, in Type IIB superstring theory and by considering an analogous open string pair production process. This setup can be taken as a simplified version of the underlying QED resulting from the particle physics standard model constructed from the intersecting D-branes. We will use this simple setup to demonstrate that the stringy pair production rate in the weak-field limit, though as expected to equal to the corresponding QED rate from the braneworld picture, contains far more important information than the QED one and as such the future detection of the Schwinger pair production can teach us lessons about the existence of extra dimension(s) and a potential source of dark matter among other things.