arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Yoshiki Sato.
We consider the Schwinger effect in confining phase by using a holographic setup. The potential analysis is performed for the confining D3-brane and D4-brane backgrounds. We find the critical electric field above which there is no potential barrier and the system becomes unstable catastrophically. An intriguing point is that no Schwinger effect occurs when the electric field is smaller than the confining string tension.
We consider universal aspects of a holographic Schwinger effect in general backgrounds with an external homogeneous electric field. The argument is based on the potential analysis developed in our previous work. Under some conditions, there always exists a critical electric field, above which the potential barrier vanishes and the system becomes unstable catastrophically. The critical value agrees with the one obtained from the Dirac-Born-Infeld action. For general confining backgrounds, we show that the Schwinger effect does not occur when the electric field is weaker than the confining string tension.
We analyze electrostatic potentials in the holographic Schwinger effect. The potential barrier for the pair production is estimated by a static potential consisting of static mass energies, an electric potential from an external electric-field, and the Coulomb potential between a particle and an antiparticle. Given that the Coulomb potential is supposed to be evaluated by the minimal surface attaching on the conformal boundary as usual, the critical field, where the potential barrier vanishes, exhibits a deviation of 30% from the one obtained from the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action. We reconsider this issue by reexamining the Coulomb-potential part, which is evaluated by the classical action of a string solution attaching on a probe D3-brane sitting at an intermediate position in the bulk AdS. Then the resulting critical-field completely agrees with the DBI result. This agreement gives rise to a strong support for the holographic scenario. We also discuss the finite-temperature case and the temperature-dependent critical-field also agrees with the DBI result.