Schwinger Pair Production at Finite Temperature in Scalar QED
Abstract
Description
In scalar QED we study the Schwinger pair production from an initial ensemble of charged bosons when an electric field is turned on for a finite period together with or without a constant magnetic field. The scalar QED Hamiltonian depends on time through the electric field, which causes the initial ensemble of bosons to evolve out of equilibrium. Using the Liouville-von Neumann method for the density operator and quantum states for each momentum mode, we calculate the Schwinger pair-production rate at finite temperature, which is the pair-production rate from the vacuum times a thermal factor of the Bose-Einstein distribution.
RevTex 10 pages, no figure; replaced by the version accepted in Phys. Rev. D; references corrected
RevTex 10 pages, no figure; replaced by the version accepted in Phys. Rev. D; references corrected