Pair creation in electromagnetic fields
Date: 18 DECEMBER 2024 from 14:00 to 15:00
Event location: Sala IR-2A
Sauter-Schwinger pair creation in electromagnetic fields is a fundamental prediction of QED and one of the motivations for the present efforts in constructing super-strong lasers. I will give a historical review of the subject, and then discuss two recent developments. The first one is the worldline instanton formalism, a sophisticated version of the WKB approximation that makes it possible to calculate the pair creation rate for complicated field configurations. The second one is an adaptation of the Wigner formalism suitable for a detailed study of the formation of real particles in time and space.