Spontaneous pair production in Reissner-Nordstrom black holes

We investigate the spontaneous pair production-including the Schwinger mechanism and the Hawking thermal radiation-of charged scalar particles from the near-horizon region of a (near) extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole. The paradigm is equivalent to the dynamics of the charged scalar field in a specific AdS(2) X S-2 spacetime with a constant electric field. Two possible boundary conditions are adopted to explicitly compute the corresponding production rate and absorption cross section. It is shown that the Schwinger production rate can be eventually suppressed by the increasing attractive gravitational force as the geometry changes from the extremal to the near extremal black hole. Consequently, the Schwinger mechanism and the Hawking radiation are generically indistinguishable for the near-extremal black holes. The holographic description dual to the pair production is also briefly discussed.