11,134 research outputs found
Polarization of the electron and positron produced in combined Coulomb and strong laser fields
The process of production in the superposition of a Coulomb and a
strong laser field is considered. The pair production rate integrated over the
momentum and summed over the spin projections of one of the particles is
derived exactly in the parameters of the laser field and in the Born
approximation with respect to the Coulomb field. The case of a monochromatic
circularly polarized laser field is considered in detail. A very compact
analytical expression of the pair production rate and its dependence on the
polarization of one of the created particles is obtained in the quasiclassical
approximation for the experimentally relevant case of an undercritical laser
field. As a result, the polarization of the created electron (positron) is
derived.Comment: 16 pages, no figure
Critical nucleus charge in a superstrong magnetic field: effect of screening
A superstrong magnetic field stimulates the spontaneous production of
positrons by naked nuclei by diminishing the value of the critical charge
Z_{cr} . The phenomenon of screening of the Coulomb potential by a superstrong
magnetic field which has been discovered recently acts in the opposite
direction and prevents the nuclei with Z52
for a nucleus to become critical stronger B are needed than without taking
screening into account.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, version to be published in Physical Review
Improved Approximations for Fermion Pair Production in Inhomogeneous Electric Fields
Reformulating the instantons in a complex plane for tunneling or transmitting
states, we calculate the pair-production rate of charged fermions in a
spatially localized electric field, illustrated by the Sauter electric field
E_0 sech^2 (z/L), and in a temporally localized electric field such as E_0
sech^2 (t/T). The integration of the quadratic part of WKB instanton actions
over the frequency and transverse momentum leads to the pair-production rate
obtained by the worldline instanton method, including the prefactor, of Phys.
Rev. D72, 105004 (2005) and D73, 065028 (2006). It is further shown that the
WKB instanton action plus the next-to-leading order contribution in spinor QED
equals the WKB instanton action in scalar QED, thus justifying why the WKB
instanton in scalar QED can work for the pair production of fermions. Finally
we obtain the pair-production rate in a spatially localized electric field
together with a constant magnetic field in the same direction.Comment: RevTex, 12 pages, two figures; replaced by the version accepted in
Phys. Rev.
Multidimensional Worldline Instantons
We extend the worldline instanton technique to compute the vacuum pair
production rate for spatially inhomogeneous electric background fields, with
the spatial inhomogeneity being genuinely two or three dimensional, both for
the magnitude and direction of the electric field. Other techniques, such as
WKB, have not been applied to such higher dimensional problems. Our method
exploits the instanton dominance of the worldline path integral expression for
the effective action.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figure
On the nature of bimodal initial velocity distribution of neutron stars
We propose that the bimodal nature of the kick velocity distribution of radio
pulsars is connected with the dichotomy between hadronic stars ({\it i.e.}
neutron stars with no quark matter content) and quark stars. Bimodality can
appear due to different mechanisms of explosion which leads to the formation of
two types of compact stars or due to two different sets of parameters mastering
a particular kick mechanism. The low velocity maximum (at km
s) is connected with hadronic star formation, whereas the second peak
corresponds to quark stars. In the model of delayed collapse of hadronic stars
to quark stars (Berezhiani et al. 2003\nocite{bbd2003}) quark deconfinement
leads to a second energy release, and to a second kick, in addition to the kick
imparted to the newly formed hadronic star during the supernova explosion. If
the electromagnetic rocket mechanism can give a significant contribution to
pulsar kicks, then the high velocity peak can be connected with the shorter
initial spin periods of quark stars with respect to hadronic stars. We discuss
{\it pro et contra} of these scenarios.Comment: 8 pages with 2 figures; accepted to A&
Population synthesis of DA white dwarfs: constraints on soft X-ray spectra evolution
Extending the population synthesis method to isolated young cooling white
dwarfs we are able to confront our model assumptions with observations made in
ROSAT All-Sky Survey (Fleming et al., 1996). This allows us to check model
parameters such as evolution of spectra and separation of heavy elements in DA
WD envelopes. It seems like X-ray spectrum temperature of these objects is
given by the formula T_{X-ray} = min(T_eff, T_max). We have obtained DA WD's
birth rate and upper limit of the X-ray spectrum temperature: DA birth rate in cubic parsec per year and T_max = 41000 K. These values
are in good correspondence with values obtained by other authors (Liebert et
al., 2004; Wolff et al., 1996). From this fact we also conclude that our
population synthesis method is applicable to the population of close-by
isolated cooling white dwarfs as well as to the population of the isolated
cooling neutron stars.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, conference "European White Dwarf Workshop, 2010",
Tubingen, German
Electron-Positron Pair Production in Space- or Time-Dependent Electric Fields
Treating the production of electron and positron pairs by a strong electric
field from the vacuum as a quantum tunneling process we derive, in
semiclassical approximation, a general expression for the pair production rate
in a -dependent electric field pointing in the -direction. We also
allow for a smoothly varying magnetic field parallel to . The result is
applied to a confined field for , a
semi-confined field for , and a linearly increasing
field . The boundary effects of the confined fields on
pair-production rates are exhibited. A simple variable change in all formulas
leads to results for electric fields depending on time rather than space.
In addition, we discuss tunneling processes in which empty atomic bound
states are spontaneously filled by negative-energy electrons from the vacuum
under positron emission. In particular, we calculate the rate at which the
atomic levels of a bare nucleus of finite size and large
are filled by spontaneous pair creation.Comment: 33 pages and 9 figures. to appear in Phys. Rev.
Schwinger Pair Creation of Particles and Strings
I shortly review the worldline instanton method for calculating Schwinger
pair production rates in (i) one-loop QED (ii) multiloop QED and (iii) one-loop
open string theory.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, talk given at XIV Mexican School of Particles and
Fields, November 8 - 12, 2010, Morelia, Mexico, to appear in the conference
proceeding
Multi-particle Production and Thermalization in High-Energy QCD
We argue that multi-particle production in high energy hadron and nuclear
collisions can be considered as proceeding through the production of gluons in
the background classical field. In this approach we derive the gluon spectrum
immediately after the collision and find that at high energies it is
parametrically enhanced by ln(1/x) with respect to the quasi-classical result
(x is the Bjorken variable). We show that the produced gluon spectrum becomes
thermal (in three dimensions) with an effective temperature determined by the
saturation momentum Qs, T= c Qs/2pi during the time ~1/T; we estimate
c=sqrt{2pi}/2 ~ 1.2. Although this result by itself does not imply that the
gluon spectrum will remain thermal at later times, it has an interesting
applications to heavy ion collisions. In particular, we discuss the possibility
of Bose-Einstein condensation of the produced gluon pairs and estimate the
viscosity of the produced gluon system.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures; typos fixed; discussions expanded; we added a
new section IV in which we argue that at high energies the production
mechanism discussed in the paper is parametrically enhanced by ln(1/x) with
respect to the quasi-classical resul
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