Pair production in strong electric fields

Abstract: We study the electron-positron pair production process in strong background electric fields with spatio-temporal inhomogeneity in the time-dependent Basis Light-front Quantization approach. We calculate the observables such as the invariant mass and the longitudinal momentum distribution of the produced pairs as functions of evolution time and compare the vacuum decay rate with that of the Schwinger effect. We observe a critical intensity of background field, above which the vacuum decay rate is no longer oscillating with time periodically as in perturbation theory. This work may provide the foundation for the study of the pair production process in strong fields with realistic spacetime structures.