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Doubly assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect

Greger Torgrimsson, Johannes Oertel, and Ralf Schützhold

  • Fakultät für Physik, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Lotharstraße 1, Duisburg 47048, Germany

Phys. Rev. D 94, 065035 – Published 26 September, 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.065035

Abstract

We study electron-positron pair creation by a strong and slowly varying electric field, assisted by a weaker and more rapidly changing field (e.g., in the keV regime) plus an additional high-energy (say MeV) photon. It turns out that this combination can yield a pair creation probability which is exponentially larger than in the case where one (or more) of the three ingredients is missing. Apart from a deeper understanding of these nonperturbative phenomena, this double enhancement may pave the way for an experimental verification of this fundamental prediction.

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References (42)

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