Tunnelling amplitudes and Hawking radiation from worldline QFT

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ilderton, Anton, Rajeev, Karthik
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ilderton, Anton
Rajeev, Karthik
author_facet Ilderton, Anton
Rajeev, Karthik
contents We compare Hawking radiation in a collapse background with Schwinger pair creation in an electric field. The comparison is driven by the presence of an analogue horizon in the Schwinger case, which causally divides spacetime for classical particles, but through which quantum fields can tunnel. Amplitudes for tunnelling processes are encoded in the asymptotic behaviour of solutions to the appropriate background-coupled wave equation. We construct these solutions, in both gravity and QED, using the worldline approach, where tunnelling and particle creation manifest as complex saddle points of a real-time path integral. For the Schwinger effect, these saddles correspond to complex worldlines, while for Hawking radiation, the corresponding worldlines are real, but appear complex when extended beyond a certain coordinate patch.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_00997
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tunnelling amplitudes and Hawking radiation from worldline QFT
Ilderton, Anton
Rajeev, Karthik
High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
We compare Hawking radiation in a collapse background with Schwinger pair creation in an electric field. The comparison is driven by the presence of an analogue horizon in the Schwinger case, which causally divides spacetime for classical particles, but through which quantum fields can tunnel. Amplitudes for tunnelling processes are encoded in the asymptotic behaviour of solutions to the appropriate background-coupled wave equation. We construct these solutions, in both gravity and QED, using the worldline approach, where tunnelling and particle creation manifest as complex saddle points of a real-time path integral. For the Schwinger effect, these saddles correspond to complex worldlines, while for Hawking radiation, the corresponding worldlines are real, but appear complex when extended beyond a certain coordinate patch.
title Tunnelling amplitudes and Hawking radiation from worldline QFT
topic High Energy Physics - Theory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00997