Quantum mechanical tunneling in multifield-induced pair creation from vacuum

Abstract

We study the pair-creation process due to spatially localized but nonoverlapping electric fields and examine the role of quantum mechanical tunneling for fermionic and bosonic systems. While for small distances between the pulses the rates are significantly different, in the tunneling regime where the separations are large the fermionic and bosonic pair-creation rates scale similarly. As long as the distance between two adjacent electric fields is less than a characteristic tunneling length, each subcritical pulse can generate particle pairs. We design a multifield configuration to make use of quantum tunneling to lower the threshold of pair creation.