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

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 nonperturbative feature of the tBLFQ approach through a realistic application of the strong coupling QED problem, in which the electromagnetic fields are generated by an ultrarelativistic 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 nonperturbative corrections compared 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.