Resummed effective actions and heat kernels: the Worldline approach and Yukawa assisted pair creation

Abstract

We adapt the Worldline Formalism to obtain resummed expressions for the effective action and the heat kernel of a quantum scalar field coupled to a Yukawa background. The resummation includes all the invariants built from powers, first derivatives and second derivatives of the latter. Using such results, we compute the instability of the vacuum computing the vacuum persistence amplitude and the corresponding Schwinger pair production probability. We show that the inclusion of an additional, rapidly varying background can greatly enhance the production of pairs.

Comments: 33 pages, 1 figure. Published version. Added analysis of pair creation for non-quadratic time-dependent potentials and spatially inhomogeneous potentials