  The Schwinger effect in the presence of instantons is considered in this
paper. Using AdS/CFT correspondence in the near horizon limit of the
D3+D($-1$)-brane background, we calculate the total potential of a
quark-antiquark pair in an external electric field. It is shown that instantons
tend to suppress the pair creation effect and increase the critical electric
field above which the pairs are produced freely without any suppression.
Interestingly, no other critical electric field, common for all confining field
theories, is observed here at finite temperature. However, as expected we find
such a critical electric field at zero temperature. The pair production rate
evaluated by the calculation of the expectation value of the circular Wilson
loop also confirms this result.
