Sauter-Schwinger pair creation dynamically assisted by a plane wave

Abstract: We study electron-positron pair creation by a strong and constant electric field superimposed with a weaker transversal plane wave which is incident perpendicularly (or under some angle). Comparing the fully non-perturbative approach based on the world-line instanton method with a perturbative expansion into powers of the strength of the weaker plane wave, we find good agreement - provided that the latter is carried out to sufficiently high orders. As usual for the dynamically assisted Sauter-Schwinger effect, the additional plane wave induces an exponential enhancement of the pair-creation probability if the combined Keldysh parameter exceeds a certain threshold.