Production of quark pairs from classical gluon fields

Abstract

We compute by numerical integration of the Dirac equation the number of quark-antiquark pairs produced in the classical color fields of colliding ultrarelativistic nuclei. Results for the dependence of the number of quarks on the strength of the background field, the quark mass and time are presented. We also perform several tests of our numerical method. While the number of qqbar pairs is parametrically suppressed in the coupling constant, we find that in this classical field model it could even be compatible with the thermal ratio to the number of gluons.