https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-8363-2
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Schwinger pair production and the extended uncertainty principle: can heuristic derivations be trusted?
1
Center for Gravitation and Cosmology, College of Physical Science and Technology, Yangzhou University, 180 Siwangting Road, Yangzhou, 225002, Jiangsu, China
2
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China
* e-mail: ycong@yzu.edu.cn
Received:
20
June
2020
Accepted:
14
August
2020
Published online:
26
August
2020
The rate of Schwinger pair production due to an external electric field can be derived heuristically from the uncertainty principle. In the presence of a cosmological constant, it has been argued in the literature that the uncertainty principle receives a correction due to the background curvature, which is known as the “extended uncertainty principle” (EUP). We show that EUP does indeed lead to the correct result for Schwinger pair production rate in anti-de Sitter spacetime (the case for de Sitter spacetime is similar), provided that the EUP correction term is negative (positive for the de Sitter case). We compare the results with previous works in the EUP literature, which are not all consistent. Our result further highlights an important issue in the literature of generalizations of the uncertainty principle: how much can heuristic derivations be trusted?
© The Author(s), 2020
