Spirals, vortices, and helicity entanglements in dynamical Sauter-Schwinger pair creation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how helicity correlations and pulse phase influence topological structures and entanglement in electron-positron pairs created by a time-dependent electric field, using Dirac equation solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a method to fully account for helicity correlations in pair creation and explores their effects on topological features and entanglement.

Findings

Helicity correlations significantly affect momentum distribution structures.

Electric pulse phase controls the formation of spirals and vortices.

Maximally entangled helicity states can be generated and manipulated.

Abstract

We study helicity correlations of electron-positron pairs created by a homogeneous time-dependent electric field in the Sauter-Schwinger scenario. Our analysis is based on solving the Dirac equation with the Feynman or anti-Feynman boundary conditions, which is equivalent to the scattering matrix approach widely used in high energy physics. Most importantly, both these methods allow to fully account for the helicity (or, more generally, spin) correlations of created particles. The influence of helicity correlations and the carrier-envelope phase of the electric pulse on the properties of topological structures (such as spirals and vortices) in momentum distributions of created particles is investigated. The generation of maximally entangled helicity states is discussed and the possibility of using a short electric pulse as a fast switch between them is indicated.