We isolate the two-step mechanism involving a real intermediate photon from the one-step mechanism involving a virtual photon for the trident process in a constant crossed field. The two-step process is shown to agree with an integration over polaris
ed sub-processes. At low to moderate quantum non-linearity parameter, the one-step process is found to be suppressed. When the parameter is large, the two decay channels are comparable if the field dimensions are not much greater than the formation length.
