Pair Production, Vacuum Polarization and Anomaly in (A)dS and Charged Black Holes

Abstract

We explore the connection between the distribution of particles spontaneously produced from an electric field or black hole and the vacuum persistence, twice the imaginary part of the one-loop effective action. Employing the reconstruction conjecture, we find the effective action for the Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac distribution. The Schwinger effect in ${\rm AdS}_2$ is computed via the phase-integral method in the static coordinates. The Hawking radiation and Schwinger effect of a charged black hole is rederived and interpreted via the phase-integral. Finally, we discuss the relation between the vacuum persistence and the trace or gravitational anomalies.