Fermion particle production in semi-classical Boltzmann-Vlasov transport theory

Abstract

We present numerical solutions of the semi-classical Boltzmann-Vlasov equation for fermion particle-antiparticle production by strong electric fields in boost-invariant coordinates in (1+1) and (3+1) dimensional QED. We compare the Boltzmann-Vlasov results with those of recent quantum field theory calculations and find good agreement. We conclude that extending the Boltzmann-Vlasov approach to the case of QCD should allow us to do a thorough investigation of how back-reaction affects recent results on the dependence of the transverse momentum distribution of quarks and anti-quarks on a second Casimir invariant of color SU(3).