The Schwinger Mechanism, the Unruh Effect and the Production of Accelerated Black Holes

We prove that the Heisenberg-Euler-Schwinger mechanism –pair creation in a constant electric field– and its radiative corrections imply the Unruh effect, i.e. the thermalisation of accelerated systems at temperature a/2π where a is the acceleration. More precisely, the properties of the amplitudes for pair creation under crossing symmetry and CPT are sufficient to deduce the Unruh effect. Furthermore, we show that pairs are created in thermal equilibrium with the Unruh temperature. These properties also hold for pair creation of charged black holes in an electric field thereby explaining why these black holes are created from vacuum in thermal equilibrium. Unité propre de recherche du C.N.R.S. associee à l’École Normale Supérieure et à l’Université de Paris Sud. e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: massar @ ccsg.tau.ac.il