  We present a short and novel derivation of the Schwinger mechanism for
particle pair production in $1+1$ dimensional de Sitter and Anti de Sitter
spacetimes. We work directly in the flat embedding space and derive the pair
production rates in these spacetimes via instanton methods. The derivation is
manifestly coordinate independent, and also lends support to the possible deep
connection between two conceptually disparate quantum phenomena - Schwinger
effect and the Davies-Unruh effect.

High Energy Physics - Theory