We address the problem of thermodynamic equilibrium with constant acceleration along the velocity field lines in a quantum relativistic statistical mechanics framework. We show that for a free scalar quantum field, after vacuum subtraction, all mean values vanish when the local temperature T is as low as the Unruh temperature T_U = A/2πwhere A is the magnitude of the acceleration four-vector. We argue that the Unruh temperature is an absolute lower bound for the temperature of any accelerated fluid at global thermodynamic equilibrium. We discuss the conditions of this bound to be applicable in a local thermodynamic equilibrium situation.
We study the temperatures for the circular and drifted Rindler motions by employing the Unruh-DeWitt detector method. In the circular motion, the temperature is increasing along the radius of the circular motion until it reaches the maximum, and then it is decreasing and eventually vanishing at the limit to the radius where the proper acceleration is infinite. In fact, the temperature is proportional to the proper acceleration quadratically near the origin of the circular motion as compared to the usual Unruh effect depending on the linear proper acceleration. On the other hand, in the drifted…
Applications of Unruh-Fulling (UF) effect are well studied in literature via the interaction of Unruh-DeWitt (UD) detector and {\it single} scalar field. In this work, we investigate a toy model, where the detector is interacting {\it simultaneously} with the {\it multiple} scalar fields. Our study reveals that the transition rate of the system significantly depends on the acceleration of the detector and the number of scalar fields ($n$). For $n\gg1$, there exists a {\it critical acceleration}, beyond which the transition rate becomes drastically high than the accelerations below the critical…
We analyse the response function of an Unruh--DeWitt detector moving with time-dependent acceleration along a one-dimensional trajectory in Minkowski spacetime. To extract the physics of the process, we propose an adiabatic expansion of this response function. This expansion is also a useful tool for computing the click rate of detectors in general trajectories. The expansion is done in powers of the time derivatives of the acceleration (jerk, snap, and higher derivatives). At the lowest order, we recover a Planckian spectrum with temperature proportional to the acceleration of the detector at…
We present simple arguments that detectors moving with constant acceleration (even acceleration for a finite time) should detect particles. The effect is seen to be universal. Moreover, detectors undergoing linear acceleration and uniform, circular motion both detect particles for the same physical reason. We show that if one uses a circularly orbiting electron in a constant external magnetic field as the Unruh--DeWitt detector, then the Unruh effect physically coincides with the experimentally verified Sokolov--Ternov effect.
We calculate the trajectories which maximize the Unruh effect, mode by mode, when given a fixed energy budget for acceleration. We find that Unruh processes are most likely to occur, and therefore potentially best observable, for certain trajectories whose acceleration is not uniform. In practice, the precise form of optimal trajectories depends on experimental bounds on how fast the acceleration can be changed. We also show that the Unruh spectra of arbitrarily accelerated observers contain the complete information to reconstruct the observers' trajectories.
We present a novel mechanism for the present acceleration of the universe. We find that the temperature of the Unruh radiation perceived by the brane is not equal to the inherent temperature (Hawking temperature at the apparent horizon) of the brane universe in the frame of Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) braneworld model. The Unruh radiation perceived by a dust dominated brane is always warmer than the brane measured by the geometric temperature, which naturally induces an energy flow between bulk and brane based on the most sound thermodynamics principles. Through a thorough investigation to t…
It is shown that the Unruh effect, i.e. the increase in temperature indicated by a uniformly accelerated thermometer in an inertial vacuum state of a quantum field, cannot be interpreted as the result of an exchange of heat with a surrounding gas. Since the vacuum is spatially homogeneous in the accelerated system its temperature must be zero everywhere as a consequence of Tolman's law. In fact, the increase of temperature of accelerated thermometers is due to systematic quantum effects induced by the local coupling between the thermometer and the vacuum. This coupling inevitably creates excit…
A detector undergoing a huge acceleration measures a thermal distribution with the Unruh temperature out of the Minkowski vacuum. Though such huge accelerations occur naturally in astrophysics and gravity, one may design untraintense laser facility to detect the Unruh effect and simulate laboratory astrophysics. We derive the QED vacuum polarization and the vacuum persistence amplitude as well as the Schwinger pair creation in an accelerating frame when a constant electric field exists in the Minkowski spacetime. We advance a thermal interpretation of Schwinger pair creation in the Rindler spa…
One of the primary reasons behind the difficulty in observing the Unruh effect is that for achievable acceleration scales the finite temperature effects are significant only for the low frequency modes of the field. Since the density of field modes falls for small frequencies in free space, the field modes which are relevant for the thermal effects would be less in number to make an observably significant effect. In this work, we investigate the response of a Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a massless scalar field which is confined in a long cylindrical cavity. The density of field modes insi…
Quantum steering is a perplexing feature at the heart of quantum mechanics that provides profound implications in understanding the nature of physical reality. On the other hand, the effect of relativistic features on quantum systems is vital in understanding the underlying foundations of physics. In this work, we study the effects of Unruh acceleration on the quantum steering of a two-qubit system. In particular, we consider the so-called quantum steering ellipsoid and the maximally-steered coherence in a non-inertial frame and find closed-form analytic expressions for the role of the Unruh a…
How to kill the Unruh effect? Very simple, by requiring the Rindler transformation to behave continuously for vanishing acceleration. Then the Unruh effect disappears as we show in the case of the massive scalar quantum field. The main point is that the continuity condition restricts the integral of the mode expansion to the positive energy spectrum, suppressing thus the $β$ - terms of the Bogoliubov transformation.
High-intensity laser fields acting on free electrons were proposed to create sufficiently large accelerations to enable detection of Unruh radiation. However, the currently achievable electron accelerations are not large enough. Here we demonstrate that Unruh effect in high-intensity laser fields is strongly enhanced near hyperbolic metamaterials, so that many orders of magnitude smaller accelerations may be used to detect Unruh radiation.
We show that a detector acquires a Berry phase due to its motion in spacetime. The phase is different in the inertial and accelerated case as a direct consequence of the Unruh effect. We exploit this fact to design a novel method to measure the Unruh effect. Surprisingly, the effect is detectable for accelerations 10^9 times smaller than previous proposals sustained only for times of nanoseconds.
We show under what conditions an accelerated detector (e.g., an atom/ion/molecule) thermalizes while interacting with the vacuum state of a quantum field in a setup where the detector's acceleration alternates sign across multiple optical cavities. We show (non-perturbatively) in what regimes the probe `forgets' that it is traversing cavities and thermalizes to a temperature proportional to its acceleration. Then we analyze in detail how this thermalization relates to the renowned Unruh effect. Finally, we use these results to propose an experimental testbed for the direct detection of the Unr…
A new and exact derivation of the Bogoliubov coefficients is obtained for the simplest case of a spinless, neutral, massive field in a uniformly accelerated frame with a constant acceleration. The method can be suitably generalized in a straightforward manner to any field with spin and charges.
The Unruh effect refers to the thermal fluctuations a detector experiences while undergoing linear motion with uniform acceleration in a Minkowski vacuum. This thermality can be demonstrated by tracing the vacuum state of the field over the modes beyond the accelerated detector's event horizon. However, the event horizon is well-defined only if the detector moves with eternal uniform linear acceleration. This idealized condition cannot be fulfilled in realistic situations when the motion unavoidably involves periods of non-uniform acceleration. Many experimental proposals to test the Unruh eff…
We study the generalized Unruh effect for accelerated reference frames that include rotation in addition to acceleration. We focus particularly on the case where the motion is planar, with presence of a static limit in addition to the event horizon. Possible definitions of an accelerated vacuum state are examined and the interpretation of the Minkowski vacuum state as a thermodynamic state is discussed. Such athermodynamic state is shown to depend on two parameters, the acceleration temperature and a drift velocity, which are determined by the acceleration and angular velocity of the accelerat…
When ground-state atoms are accelerated and the field with which they interact is in its normal vacuum state, the atoms detect Unruh radiation. We show that atoms falling into a black hole emit acceleration radiation which, under appropriate initial conditions (Boulware vacuum), has an energy spectrum which looks much like Hawking radiation. This analysis also provides insight into the Einstein principle of equivalence between acceleration and gravity. The Unruh temperature can also be obtained by using the Kubo--Martin--Schwinger (KMS) periodicity of the two-point thermal correlation function…
We study, in the framework of open quantum systems, the entanglement dynamics for a quantum system composed of two uniformly accelerated Unruh-Dewitt detectors interacting with a bath of massive scalar fields in the Minkowski vacuum. We find that the entanglement evolution for the quantum system coupled with massive fields is always slower compared with that of the one coupled with massless fields, and this time-delay effect brought by the field being massive can however be counteracted by a large enough acceleration, in contrast to the case of a static quantum system in a thermal bath, where …
The possibility of chiral symmetry restoration by acceleration is considered. The Thermalization Theorem formalism and the large $N$ limit (with $N$ being the number of pions) are employed to solve the lowest-order approximation to QCD at low energies in Rindler spacetime. It is shown that chiral symmetry is restored for accelerations higher than the critical value $a_c=4πf_π$, with $f_π$ being the pion decay constant. The results are completely analogous to those obtained in the inertial, finite-temperature case, evincing the ontic character of the Unruh effect.
Quantum radiated energy flux emitted by an Unruh-DeWitt (UD) detector, with the internal harmonic oscillator coupled to a massless scalar field, in linear oscillatory motion in (3+1) dimensional Minkowski space is studied by numerical methods. Our results show that quantum interference can indeed suppress the signal of the Unruh effect if the averaged proper acceleration is sufficiently low, but not in the regime with high averaged acceleration and short oscillatory cycle. While the averaged radiated energy flux over a cycle is always positive as guaranteed by the quantum inequalities, an obse…
We find that a uniformly accelerated particle detector coupled to the vacuum can cool down as its acceleration increases, due to relativistic effects. We show that in (1+1)-dimensions, a detector coupled to the scalar field vacuum for finite timescales (but long enough to satisfy the KMS condition) has a KMS temperature that decreases with acceleration, in certain regimes. This contrasts with the heating that one would expect from the Unruh effect.
We propose a method for simulating an Unruh-DeWitt detector, coupled to a 1+1-dimensional massless scalar field, with a suitably-engineered $χ^{(2)}$ nonlinear interaction. In this simulation, the parameter playing the role of the detector acceleration is played by the relative inverse-group-velocity gradient inside the nonlinear material. We identify experimental parameters that tune the detector energy gap, acceleration, and switching function. This system can simulate time-dependent acceleration, time-dependent detector energy gaps, and non-vacuum initial detector-field states. Furthermore,…
We have shown the classical correspondence of Unruh effect in the classical relativistic electron theory in our previous work (gr-qc/0105051). Here we demonstrate the analogy between the classical relativistic electron theory and the classical Unruh-DeWitt type monopole detector theory. The field configuration generated by a uniformly accelerated detector is worked out. The classical correspondence of Unruh effect for scalar fields is shown by calculating the modified energy density for the scalar field around the detector. We conclude that a classical monopole detector cannot find any evidenc…
Modeling the qubit by a two-level semiclassical detector coupled to a massless scalar field, we investigate how the Unruh effect affects the nonlocality and entanglement of two-qubit and three-qubit states when one of the entangled qubits is accelerated. Two distinct differences with the results of free field model in non-inertial frames are (i) for the two-qubit state, the CHSH inequality can not be violated for sufficiently large but finite acceleration, furthermore, the concurrence will experience "sudden death"; and (ii) for the three-qubit state, not only the entanglement vanishes in the …
Quantum radiated power emitted by an Unruh-DeWitt (UD) detector in linear oscillatory motion in (3+1)D Minkowski space, with the internal harmonic oscillator minimally coupled to a massless scalar field, is obtained non-perturbatively by numerical method. The signal of the Unruh-like effect experienced by the detector is found to be pronounced in quantum radiation in the highly non-equilibrium regime with high averaged acceleration and short oscillatory cycle, and the signal would be greatly suppressed by quantum interference when the averaged proper acceleration is sufficiently low. An observ…
We established the equivalence between the local Hawking temperature measured by the time-like Killing observer located at some positions $r$ with finite distances from the outer horizon $r_+$ in the 5-dimensional spinning black hole space with both negative and positive constant curvature, and the Unruh temperature measured by the Rindler observer with constant acceleration in the 6-dimensional flat space by employing the globally embedding approach.
We derive the master equation that completely determines the time evolution of the density matrix of the Unruh-DeWitt detector in an arbitrary background geometry. We apply the equation to reveal a nonequilibrium thermodynamic character of de Sitter space. This generalizes an earlier study on the thermodynamic property of the Bunch-Davies vacuum that an Unruh-DeWitt detector staying in the Poincare patch and interacting with a scalar field in the Bunch-Davies vacuum behaves as if it is in a thermal bath of finite temperature. In this paper, instead of the Bunch-Davies vacuum, we consider a cla…
Thermodynamics on the cosmological apparent horizon of a flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker metric has been investigated with Bekenstein entropy and Hawking temperature on the horizon, and Unruh temperature for the fluid inside the horizon. This temperature is experienced by a radial comoving observer infinitesimally close to the horizon due to the pressure exerted by the fluid bounded by the horizon. An expression for the entropy of the fluid has been obtained which is found to be proportional to the volume of the thermodynamic system which implies that the Unruh temperature of the flui…
One of the most fascinating aspects of quantum fields in curved spacetime is the Unruh effect. The direct experimental detection of Unruh temperature has remained an elusive challenge up to now. Gradient optical waveguides manipulating the dispersion of photons are assumed to realize the great acceleration of effective particles, leading to a high effective Unruh temperature. However, experimentally achieving this optical waveguide has not yet been reported. In this work, we exploit a tapered fiber to simulate the accelerated motion of effective particles and obtain an effective Unruh temperat…
The Unruh effect is the phenomenon that accelerated observers detect particles even when inertial observers experience the vacuum state. In particular, uniformly accelerated observers are predicted to measure thermal radiation that is proportional to the acceleration. Here we consider the Unruh effect for a detector that follows a quantum superposition of different accelerated trajectories in Minkowski spacetime. More precisely, we analyse the excitations of a pointlike multilevel particle detector coupled to a massless real scalar field and moving in the superposition of accelerated trajector…
Generalized Unruh temperature for dynamical thin-shell wormholes
Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa（里斯本大学理学院空间科学与天体物理研究所）；Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa（里斯本大学理学院物理系）；Faculdade de Física, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Física, Universidade Federal do Pará（帕拉联邦大学物理学院物理研究生项目）；Faculdade de Ciências Exatas e Tecnologia, Universidade Federal do Pará, Campus Universitário de Abaetetuba（帕拉联邦大学阿巴泰图巴校园精确科学与技术学院）
We study the detailed balance temperatures recorded along all classes of stationary, uniformly accelerated worldlines in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, namely along (i) linear uniform acceleration, (ii) cusped, (iii) circular, (iv) catenary, and (v) helix worldlines, among which the Unruh temperature is the particular case for linear uniform acceleration. As a measuring device, we employ an Unruh-DeWitt detector, modeled as a qubit that interacts for a long time with a massless Klein-Gordon field in the vacuum state. The temperatures in each case (i) - (v) are functions of up to three i…
We use the Unruh effect to analyze the dynamics of classical and quantum correlations for a two-qubit system when one of them is uniformly accelerated for a finite amount of proper time. We show that the quantum correlation is completely destroyed in the limit of infinite acceleration, while the classical one remains nonzero. In particular, we show that such correlations exhibit the so-called sudden-change behavior as a function of acceleration. Eventually, we discuss how our results can be interpreted when the system lies in the vicinity of the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole.
A great deal of evidence has been mounting over the years showing a deep connection between acceleration, radiation, and the Unruh effect. Indeed, the fact that the Unruh effect can be codified in the Larmor radiation emitted by the charge was used to propose an experiment to experimentally confirm the existence of the Unruh thermal bath. However, such connection has two puzzling issues: (1) how the quantum Unruh effect can be codified in the classical Larmor radiation and (2) the fundamental role played by zero-Rindler-energy modes of the Unruh thermal bath in such a context. Here we generali…
We investigate the behaviour of quantum heat engines, in which a qubit is put through the quantum equivalent of the Otto cycle and the heat reservoirs are due to the Unruh effect. The qubit is described by an Unruh--DeWitt detector model coupled quadratically to a scalar field and alternately to a fermion field. In the cycle, the qubit undergoes two stages of differing constant acceleration corresponding to thermal contact with a hot and cold reservoir. Explicit conditions are derived on the accelerations required for this cycle to have positive work output. By analytically calculating the det…
An interesting feature of the Davies-Unruh effect is that an uniformly accelerated observer sees an isotropic thermal spectrum of particles even though there is a preferred direction in this context, determined by the direction of the acceleration g. We investigate the thermal fluctuations in the Unruh bath by studying the Brownian motion of particles in the bath, especially as regards to isotropy. We find that the thermal fluctuations are anisotropic and induce different frictional drag forces on the Brownian particle depending on whether it has a drift velocity along the direction of acceler…
We analyze the response of an Unruh-DeWitt detector moving along an unbounded spatial trajectory in a two-dimensional spatial plane with constant independent magnitudes of both the four-acceleration and of a timelike proper time derivative of the four-accelration. In a Fermi-Walker frame moving with the detector, the direction of the acceleration rotates at a constant rate around a great circle. This is the motion of a charge in a uniform electric field when in the frame of the charge there is both an electric and a magnetic field. We compare the response of this detector to a detector moving …
Thanks to a local interpetation of the KMS condition, the mapping from (unbounded) wedge regions of Minkowski space-time to (bounded) double-cone regions is extended to the Unruh temperature associated to relevant observers in both regions. A previous result, the diamond's temperature, is shown to be proportional to the inverse of the conformal factor (Weyl rescaling of the metric) of this map. One thus explains from a mathematical point of view why an observer with finite lifetime experiences the vacuum as a thermal state whatever his acceleration, even vanishing.
It is well known that a detector, coupled linearly to a quantum field and accelerating through the inertial vacuum with a constant acceleration $g$, will behave as though it is immersed in a radiation field with temperature $T=(g/2π)$. We study a generalization of this result for detectors moving with a time-dependent acceleration $g(τ)$ along a given direction. After defining the rate of excitation of the detector appropriately, we evaluate this rate for time-dependent acceleration, $g(τ)$, to linear order in the parameter $η= \dot g / g^2$. In this case, we have three length scales in the pr…
The Unruh effect, thereby an ideally accelerated quantum detector is predicted to absorb thermalized virtual photons and re-emit real photons, is significantly extended for laboratory accessible configurations. Using modern influence functional techniques, we obtain explicit expressions describing the excitation and relaxation of the quantum levels of an Unruh detector as a general noninertial open quantum system. Remarkably, for controllable periodical motions, an exact master equation is found for the Unruh detector within the prevailing framework of quantum optics with a well-defined Unruh …
We propose a relativistic quantum Otto cycle between an entangled state of two qubits and their composite excited (or ground) state whose efficiency can be greater than the usual single qubit quantum Otto engine. The hot and cold reservoirs are constructed by providing uniform accelerations to these qubits along with the interaction between the background field and individual qubits. The efficiency, as measured from one of the qubits' frame, not only depends on the energy gap of the states but also the relative acceleration between them. For lower acceleration of our observer's qubit compared …
In contrast to recent criticism we undertake to show that the notion of Unruh temperature describes a real thermal property of the vacuum if viewed from an accelerated reference frame. We embed our investigation in a more general analysis of general relativistic temperature (Tolman-Ehrenfest effect) with the entropy-maximum principle being our guiding principle. We show that the Unruh effect neatly fits into this more general framework. Our criterion of reality is, first, the possibility to transfer a quantum of acceleration radiation to the inertial laboratory where it can be studied in princ…
We study the dynamics of steering between two correlated Unruh-Dewitt detectors when one of them locally interacts with external scalar field via different quantifiers. We find that the quantum steering, either measured by the entropic steering inequality or the Cavalcanti-Jones-Wiseman-Reid inequality, is fragile under the influence of Unruh thermal noise. The quantum steering is found always asymmetric and the asymmetry is extremely sensitive to the initial state parameter. In addition, the steering-type quantum correlations experience "sudden death" for some accelerations, which are quite d…
Using the influence functional formalism, the problem of an accelerating detector in the presence of a scalar field in its ground state is considered in Minkowski space. As is known since the work of Unruh, to a quantum mechanical detector following a definite, classical acceleration, the field appears to be thermally excited. We relax the requirement of perfect classicality for the trajectory and substitute it with one of {\it derived} classicality through the criteria of decoherence. The ensuing fluctuations in temperature are then related with the time and the amplitude of excitation in the…
