Ambient temperature versus ambient acceleration in the circular motion Unruh effect

Bunney, Cameron R. D.; Parry, Leo; Perche, T. Rick; Louko, Jorma

Abstract

It is well known that the experience of a linearly accelerated observer with acceleration a, interacting with a massless scalar field in its vacuum state in 3+1 Minkowski spacetime, is identical to that of a static observer interacting with a massless scalar field in a thermal state of temperature a/2π in 3+1 Minkowski spacetime. We study the robustness of this duality by comparing an observer undergoing circular motion in a thermal bath with an observer that undergoes circular motion around a linearly accelerated trajectory. We find that in most regimes, observers in these two cases experience the field in different ways, and are generally able to tell the difference between the two cases by measuring observables localized along their trajectories.

Citation

Bunney, C. R., Parry, L., Perche, T. R., & Louko, J. (2024). Ambient temperature versus ambient acceleration in the circular motion Unruh effect. Physical Review D, 109(6), Article 065001. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.109.065001

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 6, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Mar 1, 2024
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2024
• Deposit Date: Mar 11, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 11, 2024
• Journal: Physical Review D
• Print ISSN: 2470-0010
• Electronic ISSN: 2470-0029
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 109
• Issue: 6
• Article Number: 065001
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.109.065001
• Keywords: Quantum field theory; Unruh effect
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/32179387
• Publisher URL: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.065001