Vacuum instability and pair production in an optical setting
Abstract
In the Dirac-sea picture, the physics of pair production and instability of the quantum electrodynamics vacuum in presence of an oscillating electric field resembles the phenomenon of interband transition of light waves in photonic superlattices induced by a geometric curvature. We realize a binary wave guide superlattice with a curved optical axis mimicking dynamical pair production induced by two counterpropagating ultrastrong laser pulses. Our optical analogue enables visualization of formation of electron-positron pair in physical space as splitting of a wave packet, originally representing an electron in the Dirac sea.
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Prior optical simulations of relativistic phenomena are limited either in the classical regime or in flat space, leaving quantum evolution related with general relativity uninvestigated.
“However, all these works are limited either in classical regime or in the flat space, leaving the quantum evolution related with general relativity uninvestigated.”
From Quantum simulation of particle pair creation near the event horizon (2020) · cites this paper as [49]
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References 35 · Cited by 42
- Authors
- Dreisow, F., Longhi, S., Nolte, S., Tünnermann, A., & Szameit, A.
- Affiliations
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
- Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie (IT)
- Venue
- Physical Review Letters
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 2012-09-12
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 110401-110401
- ISSN
- 0031-9007 (ISSN-L)
- 1079-7114
- OpenAlex
- W2334466134
- Cited by
- 42
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 5
- FWCI
- 1.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Physical Review Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Publikationsdatenbank der Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft) (submittedVersion)
- Fraunhofer-Publica (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft) (submittedVersion)
- Virtual Community of Pathological Anatomy (University of Castilla La Mancha) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Quantum and Classical Electrodynamics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Strong Light-Matter Interactions
- Keywords
- vacuum instability, pair production, Dirac sea, oscillating electric field, optical counterparts, interband transitions, photonic superlattices, electron-positron pairs, wave packet splitting
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