Bosonization for the Schwinger effect at small fermion mass: analytic formula for the 1+1D current in an arbitrary time-dependent, inhomogeneous electric field

We derive an analytic formula for the expectation value of the current due to Schwinger pair-production in an arbitrary time-dependent, spatially inhomogeneous external electric field in 1+1 dimensions, as a perturbative expansion in the fermion mass $m$. We work to order $m^2$, finding contributions at order $m^0$, $m^2\log m$ and $m^2$; there is no contribution at $O(m)$. The calculation is enabled by a new ``hybrid method’’ using bosonization, where part of the calculation is performed on the fermion side and part is performed on the boson side. The fermion side allows us to define the vacuum using the free theory in the infinite past, while the boson side allows us to compute the current without regularization, since the current operator is linear in the boson field. In the special case of a spatially homogeneous background field, we also perform the calculation purely on the fermion side using adiabatic regularization. The detailed agreement of the results provides a highly non-trivial check of the duality.