Photon-stimulated production of electron-positron pairs in electric field

Abstract

The rate of $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair creation by external electric field in the presence of an incident photon beam is calculated for the photon energy far below the threshold, $\omega \ll m$, and the field strength small as compared to the critical one, $eE\ll m^2$. We find the pair production rate using a recently developed method based on calculation of the process in a thermal bath with subsequent identification of the contribution of single-photon states. We demonstrate that a non-trivial dependence on the ratio of the small parameters, $\omega m/(eE)$, emerges in this approach from an essentially (semi)classical calculation.

Comments: 11 pages, 2 figures