Particle distribution in intense fields in a light-front Hamiltonian approach

Abstract

We study the real-time evolution of an electron influenced by intense electromagnetic fields using the time-dependent basis light-front quantization (tBLFQ) framework. We focus on demonstrating the non-perturbative feature of the tBLFQ approach through a realistic application of the strong coupling QED problem, in which the electromagnetic fields are generated by an ultra-relativistic nucleus. We calculate transitions of an electron influenced by such electromagnetic fields and we show agreement with light-front perturbation theory when the atomic number of the nucleus is small. We compare tBLFQ simulations with perturbative calculations for nuclei with different atomic numbers, and obtain the significant higher-order contributions for heavy nuclei. The simulated real-time evolution of the momentum distribution of an electron evolving inside the strong electromagnetic fields exhibits significant non-perturbative corrections comparing to light-front perturbation theory calculations. The formalism used in this investigation can be extended to QCD problems in heavy ion collisions and electron ion collisions.

13 pages, 6 figures