Backreaction inclusive Schwinger effect

Abstract: We employ a self-consistent framework to study the backreaction effects of particle creation in coupled semiclassical dynamics of a quantum complex scalar field and a classical electric field in both Minkowski and de Sitter spacetimes. This approach utilizes a general formalism to analyze the evolution of Gaussian states of a quantized field, in the Schrodinger picture in the presence of a background electric field. We numerically solve the resulting nonlinear equations using initial data that consists of a Gaussian scalar field state. This provides a self-consistent semiclassical evolution incorporating the non-perturbative backreaction from particle production. We study the time-dependent particle content, current density, and electric field, which are defined in terms of the concept of instantaneous eigenstates, and describe how they capture the time evolution of the quantized field modes. We then compare the results with and without backreaction in flat and cosmological de Sitter spacetime, finding that the backreaction significantly alters particle production in both cases.