Chiral Symmetry and Quark-Antiquark Pair Creation in a Strong Color-Electromagnetic Field

We study the manifestation of chiral symmetry and q-q pair creation in the presence of the external color-electromagnetic field, using the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. We derive the compact formulae of the effective potential, the Dyson equation for the dynamical quark mass and the q-q pair creation rate in the covariantly constant color-electromagnetic field. Our results are compared with those in other approaches. The chiral-symmetry restoration takes place by a strong color-electric field, and the rapid reduction of the dynamical quark mass is found around the critical field strength, E_cr ≃4 GeV/fm. Natural extension to the three-flavor case including s-quarks is also done. Around quarks or antiquarks, chiral symmetry would be restored by the sufficiently strong color-electric field, which may lead to the chiral bag picture of hadrons. For the early stage for ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions, the possibility of the chiral-symmetry restoration is indicated in the central region just after the collisions.