We investigate Schwinger pair production in spatially inhomogeneous electric backgrounds. A critical point for the onset of pair production can be approached by fields that marginally provide sufficient electrostatic energy for an off-shell long-range electron-positron fluctuation to become a real pair. Close to this critical point, we observe features of universality which are analogous to con...

The renewed interest for critical fluctuations in superconductors is due to the enormous variety of interesting phenomena observed in the last decade. In a zero external field regime, non-classical values of the critical exponents and amplitude ratios were measured. In the observed critical region we have −0.03 < α < 0, ν ≈ 0.67 and A+/A− ≈ 1.065. These values were measured for bulk samples of ...

one of the main distinctions between geomaterials and other engineering materials is the spatial variation of their properties in different directions. this characteristic of geomaterials -so called heterogeneity- is studied herewith. several spatial distributions are introduced to describe probabilistic variation of geotechnical properties of soils. among all, the absolute normal distribution ...