Pair creation induced by transitions between electronic and positronic bound states

We study the creation process of electron-positron pairs from the quantum electrodynamical vacuum under very strong electric fields by solving the quantum field theoretical Dirac equation on a space-time grid. We investigate the role of bound-bound state mixing in such a process, which can be studied if the external force can be modeled by a combination of a potential barrier and a potential well. By increasing the magnitude of the two potentials, discrete states that originate from the positive and negative energy continua can become quasidegenerate in the mass gap region (between -mc(2) and mc(2)). We show that this bound-bound state mixing is quite different from the usual bound-continuum state mixing where the particles are created until the Pauli exclusion principle inhibits this process. In the case of bound-bound mixing the particle number exhibits a characteristic oscillatory behavior that in principle can last forever. These findings can be modeled by an effective two-state model.