Estimating the realistic start-up of spontaneous emission in the supercritical QED

Abstract

The scenario of spontaneous positron emission, caused by the supercritical Coulomb source with charge $Z$ and size $R$, is explored in essentially non-perturbative approach with emphasis on the vacuum energy $\mathcal{E}_{VP}$\footnote{Throughout the paper the abbreviation "VP"\, stands for "vacuum polarization"\,.}, considered as a function of $R$ with fixed $Z>Z_{cr,1}\simeq 170$. It is shown that in the supercritical region the behavior of $\mathcal{E}_{VP}(R)$ turns out to be quite different in dependence on the value of the Coulomb charge $Z$. In particular, spontaneous emission becomes a visible effect starting only from $Z \sim 300$. With further growth of $Z$ its intensity increases very rapidly, which opens up the possibility for unambiguous detection. For such $Z$ the appearing picture of spontaneous emission turns out to be well-established and quite transparent in terms of the resonance decay combined with vacuum shells formation. The intimate, but crucial role of $\mathcal{E}_{VP}(R)$ in the total energy balance in the system is outlined. The additional problems of spontaneous emission, caused by the lepton number conservation, are also discussed.