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Abstract

Pair creation from vacuum induced by electromagnetic fields is probably one of the most intriguing phenomena in physics. If the fields are sufficiently strong, the QED vacuum become unstable. Due to the remarkable progress inm laser technology during recent years an experimental investigation of pair creation by pure laser light is coming into reach. The focus of this thesis is on pair creation in counterpropagating laser beams. The pair creation probability is calculated employing the numerically obtained solutions of the Dirac equation. This numerical ansatz has the capability of calculating the momentum distribution of the created pairs in a single propagation, for pure time dependent field configurations. Furthermore, it allows to take the magnetic component of the laser fields into account, which is usually neglected. The latter strongly affects the creation process at high laser frequency. The involved numerical calculations are rather time consuming, therefore the second project of this thesis was to develop a highly efficient code for solving relativistic quantum mechanical problems. This is accomplished by adopting the split-operator method to the Klein-Gordon equation. Here the possibility arises to use parallel computing. However the corresponding spin-statistics becomes crucial in the case of pair creation, demonstrated in several examples.