  Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we construct the holographic dual of a
tunneling instanton describing Schwinger pair creation in de Sitter space. Our
approach allows us to extract the critical value of the electric field for
which the potential barrier disappears, rendering the vacuum unstable. In
addition, we compute the large-$\lambda$, large-$N_c$ corrections to the
nucleation rate and we find that it agrees with previous expectations based on
perturbative computations. As a by-product of this investigation, we study the
causal structure of the string dual to the nucleated pair as seen by different
static observers and we show that it can be interpreted as a dynamical creation
of a `gluonic' wormhole. We explain how this result provides further evidence
for the ER=EPR conjecture as an equivalence between two descriptions of the
same physical phenomenon.
