Magnetically induced vacuum decay

Abstract

We study the fermionic vacuum energy of vacua with and without being applied an external magnetic field. The energetic difference of two vacua leads to the vacuum decaying and the vacuum-energy releasing. In the context of quantum field theories, we discuss why and how the vacuum energy can be released by spontaneous photon emissions and/or paramagnetically screening the external magnetic field. In addition, we quantitatively compute the vacuum energy released, the paramagnetic screening effect and the rate and spectrum of spontaneous photon emissions. The possibilities of experimentally detecting such an effect of vacuum-energy releasing and this effect accounting for the anormalous X-ray pulsar are discussed.