Phase-Integral Formulation of Dynamically Assisted Schwinger Pair Production

Abstract: We present a phase-integral formulation of dynamically assisted Schwinger pair production of scalar charges to find the pair production density under a strong low-frequency field and a weak high-frequency field. The leading WKB action was the Schwinger formula determined by the constant field, whose corrections are determined by the Keldysh parameter for the oscillating field, $m\omega_{q}/qE_{q}$. We found a systematic expression of the leading WKB action as a power series in the Keldysh parameter, of which coefficients are given as integrals of the product of fields in the complex time domain. For the case of a strong constant field superimposed with a weak oscillating field, we provided explicit formulas and proposed a procedure for numerical evaluation. The presented phase-integral formulation should provide a clear simple method for quantitatively analyzing the leading-order features of dynamically assisted Schwinger pair production.