Holographic Schwinger effect in a step dilaton background

A bstract We investigate the holographic Schwinger effect in a confining background with a step dilaton profile, which induces a sharp transition between ultraviolet and infrared regimes and provides a qualitatively distinct realization of confinement. Within this framework, the quark-antiquark potential is extracted from the classical configuration of a fundamental string, allowing for a direct analysis of vacuum instability and pair production. In the absence of a magnetic field, the step dilaton leads to a significantly sharper suppression of the potential barrier as the electric field increases, implying an enhanced sensitivity of the critical electric field compared to smooth soft-wall models and demonstrating that the abrupt geometric transition qualitatively enhances the onset of vacuum decay. Incorporating an external magnetic field through the Dirac-Born-Infeld action, we find a nontrivial and amplified deformation of the potential barrier, resulting in a pronounced shift of the critical electric field that depends on both the magnitude and orientation of the magnetic field. Overall, the step dilaton background exhibits a substantially stronger response of the Schwinger effect to external electromagnetic fields than conventional soft-wall models, providing a novel mechanism for controlling pair production and highlighting the crucial role of dilaton structure in non-perturbative dynamics of holographic QCD.