Pair Production of Open Strings - Relativistic versus Dissipative Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates open string pair production in electric fields, comparing relativistic and dissipative dynamics, deriving new non-relativistic limits, and calculating pair nucleation rates relevant for practical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a unified framework for analyzing pair production in both relativistic and non-relativistic regimes, including quantum dissipation effects.

Findings

Recovered known results for relativistic pair production and Born-Infeld action.

Derived a non-relativistic limit showing quantum dissipation.

Calculated pair nucleation rate in the dissipative regime.

Abstract

We study the pair production of open strings in constant electric fields, using a general framework which encodes both relativistic string theory and generic linearly extended systems as well. In the relativistically invariant case we recover previous results, both for pair production and for the effective Born-Infeld action. We then derive a non-relativistic limit - where the propagation velocity along the string is much smaller than the velocity of light - obtaining quantum dissipation. We calculate the pair nucleation rate for this case, which could be relevant for applications.