Coupled fermion and boson production in a strong background mean-field

Abstract

We derive quantum kinetic equations for fermion and boson production starting from a phi^4 Lagrangian with minimal coupling to fermions. Decomposing the scalar field into a mean-field part and fluctuations we obtain spontaneous pair creation driven by a self-interacting strong background field. The produced fermion and boson pairs are self-consistently coupled. Consequently back reactions arise from fermion and boson currents determining the time dependent self-interacting background mean-field. We explore the numerical solution in flux tube geometry for the time evolution of the mean-field as well as for the number- and energy densities for fermions and bosons. We find that after a characteristic time all energy is converted from the background mean-field to particle creation. Applying this general approach to the production of ``quarks'' and ``gluons'' a typical time scale for the collapse of the flux tube is 1.5 fm/c.