Pair Production, Vacuum Polarization and Anomaly in (A)dS and Charged Black Holes

Abstract: We explore the connection between the distribution of particles spontaneously produced from an electric field or black hole and the vacuum persistence, twice the imaginary part of the one-loop effective action. Employing the reconstruction conjecture, we find the effective action for the Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac distribution. The Schwinger effect in ${\rm AdS}_2$ is computed via the phase-integral method in the static coordinates. The Hawking radiation and Schwinger effect of a charged black hole is rederived and interpreted via the phase-integral. Finally, we discuss the relation between the vacuum persistence and the trace or gravitational anomalies.