Photon cluster excitation mechanism in an e-e+ plasma created from vacuum by a strong electromagnetic field

Abstract

In the low density approximation of nonperturbative kinetic theory we investigate the vacuum creation of an electron-positron plasma (EPP) under the action of an external monochromatic "laser" electric field with the focus on multiphoton processes. We analyse in some detail the role of the photon cluster mechanism of EPP excitation and show that this mechanism plays the dominating role in the case when a large photon number from the external field reservoir takes part in the breakdown of the energy gap. We obtain the distribution function in this approximation and discuss its properties.