Comment on Fermionic and Bosonic Pair-creation in an External Electric Field at Finite Temperature

Abstract

We show that contrary to the claim made by Hallin and Liljenberg in Phys. Rev. D52 1150,(1995), (hep-th/9412188) the thermal correction to the thermal decay or pair production rate for a system placed in a heat bath in the presence of an external electric field, is always nonzero in the finite as well as infinite time limit. Using the formalism outlined there, we reestimate the decay rate for different values of temperature, mass and time.We also try to identify the parameter ranges where the quantity of interest agrees with that computed previously, at high temperature (in the infinite time limit), from the imaginary part of the effective action using imaginary time and real time formalism of thermal field theory. We also point out that in the strictly infinite time limit, the correct decay rate as obtained from the work of Hallin et. al. tends to diverge.