Schwinger effect for non-Abelian gauge bosons

Abstract

We investigate the Schwinger effect for the gauge bosons in an unbroken non-Abelian gauge theory ( e.g.the gluons of QCD). For the simplicity the SU 2 non-Abelian gauge theory is considered. We considerboth constant“color electric" fields and “color magnetic" fields as backgrounds. As in the AbelianSchwinger effect we find there is production of “gluons" for the color electric field, but no particleproduction for the color magnetic field case. Since the non-Abelian gauge bosons are massless there is noexponential suppression of particle production due to the mass of the electron/positron that one finds in theAbelian Schwinger effect. Despite the lack of an exponential suppression of the gluon production rate dueto the masslessness of the gluons, we find that the critical field strength is even larger in the non-Abeliancase as compared to the Abelian case. The calculations for gluon production from a uniform chromoelectricfield and from a uniform chromomagnetic field are made. This is the result of the confinement phenomenonon QCD.