In order to study the degradation mechanism of leakage current in AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), we have fabricated AlGaN/GaN heterojunction Schottky diodes having equivalent structure and characteristics to AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. Step stress tests were then performed to compare the leakage current changes at different gate voltages. The transport mechanism of leakage current before and after degradation was validated based on the current-voltage and capacitance-voltage measurements. The light emission from the device surface was examined by emission microscopy (EMMI) to investigate the time-dependent degradation of leakage current. Experimental results show that the leakage current increases with increasing time and is accompanied by a large noise when the applied gate voltage exceeds a critical value. After introducing the polarization field into the current-field dependence, log(IFT/E) exhibits a good linear relationship with E both before and after degradation, indicating that the leakage current is dominated by the Frenkel-Poole (FP) emission. The slope of log(IFT/E)-E curve decreases after degradation, and the hot spots corresponding to defects are directly observed by EMMI at the gate edge of the degraded device, suggesting that the degradation mechanism is: New defects are induced by high electric field in the AlGaN layer, and the increase of defect density leads to the increase of FP emission current.