WKB approach to pair creation in spacetime-dependent fields

Abstract

Besides tunneling in static potential landscapes, for example, the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approach is a powerful nonperturbative approximation tool to study particle creation due to time-dependent background fields, such as cosmological particle production or the Sauter-Schwinger effect, i.e., electron-positron pair creation in a strong electric field. However, our understanding of particle creation processes in background fields depending on both space and time is rather incomplete. In order to venture into this direction, we propose a generalization of the WKB method to truly spacetime-dependent fields and apply it to the case of a spacetime-dependent mass.