Vacuum Particle-Antiparticle Creation in Strong Fields as a Field-Induced Phase Transition

Abstract

We study the special features of vacuum particle creation in an external classical field for two simple external field models in standard QED. Our investigation is based on a kinetic equation that is a nonperturbative consequence of the fundamental QED equations of motion. We identify the special features of system evolution that apply qualitatively also for other systems and are therefore rather general. The common basis for a description of these systems is formed by kinetic equations for vacuum particle creation belonging to the class of integro-differential equations of non-Markovian type with fastly oscillating kernel. This allows us to characterize the processes of this type as belonging to the class of field-induced phase transitions. Examples range from condensed matter physics to cosmology.