We revisit the Unruh effect within a general framework based on direct, probability-level calculations. We rederive the transition rate of a uniformly accelerating Unruh-DeWitt monopole detector coupled to a massive scalar field, from both the perspective of an inertial (Minkowski) observer and an accelerating (Rindler) observer. We show that, for a measurement at a finite time after the initial state is prepared, the two perspectives give the same transition rate. We confirm that an inertial detector in a thermal bath of Minkowski particles responds differently to the accelerated detector (which perceives a thermal bath of Rindler particles), except in the case of a massless field where there is agreement at all times. Finally, new numerical results for the transition rate are presented and explained, highlighting the transient effects caused by forcing the field to initially be in the Minkowski vacuum state.
Traditionally the physics of the Unruh effect, i.e. the q.f.t. in the wedges $W_R$ or $W_L$ in Minkowski space is related to the physics in the Rindler Fock space, which is a proplematical strategy. In a careful analysis we show that the correct dual q.f.t. lives rather in the thermal Rindler Hilbert space and turns out to be unitarily equivalent to the corresponding Minkowski space theory in contrast to the Rindler Fock space theory. We show in particular that in thermal Rindler Hilbert space a new sort of objects occurs, viz., quasi-particle/hole creation/annihilation operators of thermal Ri…
We examine an Unruh-DeWitt particle detector that is coupled linearly to the scalar density of a massless Dirac field in Minkowski spacetimes of dimension $d\ge2$ and on the static Minkowski cylinder in spacetime dimension two, allowing the detector's motion to remain arbitrary and working to leading order in perturbation theory. In $d$-dimensional Minkowski, with the field in the usual Fock vacuum, we show that the detector's response is identical to that of a detector coupled linearly to a massless scalar field in $2d$-dimensional Minkowski. In the special case of uniform linear acceleration…
Corrections to the Unruh Effect from Robin Boundary Conditions in Punctured Minkowski Spacetime
Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin, Universidade Estadual de Campinas（坎皮纳斯州立大学格莱巴·瓦塔金物理研究所）；Departamento de Matemática Aplicada, Universidade Estadual de Campinas（坎皮纳斯州立大学应用数学系）；Universidade Estadual de Campinas（坎皮纳斯州立大学）
It is well known that the rotational motion does not induce Unruh effect, because the Minkowski vacuum coincides with the vacuum state defined by the pure rotating observers. However, are there Rindler particles carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), and do they produce observable effect? To answer these questions, we need an accelerated observer having a vortex structure in the transverse dimensions and carrying well-defined OAM. Here we consider the angular momentum characteristics of Unruh effect in the theory of scalar field and electromagnetic field for the first time. We find that the …
We find the response function and the transition rate for an Unruh-DeWitt detector interacting with a conformal scalar field in global two-dimensional anti--de Sitter (AdS) spacetime with different boundary conditions at its conformal infinities. We calculate the particle energy spectrum as seen by subcritical accelerated detectors and discuss how it depends on the choice of the boundary condition. We show that, despite this nontrivial dependence on the boundary conditions, the limit when the AdS length scale tends to zero is well defined and leads to the well-known results of 1+1 Minkowski sp…
Decoherence of ergotropy of a relativistic battery as a probe of motion-selected Unruh thermality in Minkowski spacetime
Suzhou University of Science and Technology（苏州科技大学）；Pacific Institute of Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia（不列颠哥伦比亚大学物理与天文学系太平洋理论物理研究所）
University of York（约克大学）；Universidade Estadual Paulista（圣保罗州立大学）；Universidade de São Paulo（圣保罗大学）；Austrian Academy of Sciences（奥地利科学院）；Rutherford Appleton Laboratory（鲁瑟福阿普尔顿实验室）；University of Strathclyde（思克莱德大学）；Universidade Federal do Pará（帕拉联邦大学）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
We study the influence of the thermal background on the existence of the anti-Unruh effect. For the massless scalar field, we present that the anti-Unruh effect can appear when the detector is accelerated in the thermal field, which is shown to be absent when accelerating in the Minkowski vacuum. For the massive scalar field, it is found that the anti-Unruh effect which exists in the case for accelerated detectors in the vacuum can disappear when the background temperature increases. We use the many-body entangled quantum state to study the situation of the massive scalar field. When the many-…
We study an Unruh-DeWitt particle detector that is coupled to the proper time derivative of a real scalar field in 1+1 spacetime dimensions. Working within first-order perturbation theory, we cast the transition probability into a regulator-free form, and we show that the transition rate remains well defined in the limit of sharp switching. The detector is insensitive to the infrared ambiguity when the field becomes massless, and we verify explicitly the regularity of the massless limit for a static detector in Minkowski half-space. We then consider a massless field for two scenarios of intere…
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)（澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织）；School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland（昆士兰大学数理学院）；Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University（冲绳科学技术大学院大学）
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 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 …
Using the Zubarev quantum-statistical density operator, we calculated the corrections to the energy-momentum tensor of a massless fermion gas associated with acceleration. It is shown that when fourth-order corrections are taken into account, the energy-momentum tensor in the laboratory frame is equal to zero at a proper temperature measured by a comoving observer equal to Unruh temperature. Consequently, the Minkowski vacuum is visible to the accelerated observer as a medium filled with a heat bath of particles with the Unruh temperature, which is the essence of the Unruh effect.
We investigate the Unruh-Fulling effect in a class of nonlocal field theories by examining both the number operator and Unruh-DeWitt detector methods. Unlike in previous literature, we use Unruh quantization to quantize the matter field. Such choice, as oppose to standard Minkowski decomposition, naturally incorporates the time translational invariance in the positive frequency Wightman function and thus captures the thermal equilibrium of the system. We analyze the Unruh-Fulling effect for a massless real scalar field in both the Lorentz noninvariant and Lorentz invariant nonlocal theories. I…
We study the radiative process of two entangled two-level atoms uniformly accelerated in a thermal bath, coupled to a massless scalar field. First, using the positive frequency Wightman function from the Minkowski modes with a Rindler transformation we provide the transition probabilities for the transitions from maximally entangled symmetric and anti-symmetric Bell states to the collective excited state in $(1+1)$ and $(1+3)$ dimensions. We observe a possible case of \emph{anti-Unruh-like} event in these transition probabilities, though the $(1+1)$ and $(1+3)$ dimensional results are not comp…
We investigate a two-level Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a massless scalar field or its proper time derivative in $(1+1)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, in a quantum state whose correlation structure across the Rindler horizon mimics the stationary aspects of a firewall that Almheiri et al have argued to ensue in an evaporating black hole spacetime. Within first-order perturbation theory, we show that the detector's response on falling through the horizon is sudden but finite. The difference from the Minkowski vacuum response is proportional to $ω^{-2}\ln(|ω|)$ for the non-derivative dete…
We examine an Unruh-DeWitt particle detector which couples linearly to the scalar density of a massless Dirac field on the static cylindrical quotient of the (1+1)-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, allowing the detector's motion to remain arbitrary and working to leading order in perturbation theory. We show that the detector's response distinguishes the periodic and antiperiodic spin structures, and the zero mode that is present for periodic spinors contributes to the response by a state-dependent but well defined and controllable amount.
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…
The energy of a particle moving on a spacetime, in principle, can affect the background metric. The modifications to it depend on the ratio of energy of the particle and the Planck energy, known as rainbow gravity. Here we find the explicit expressions for the coordinate transformations from rainbow Minkowski spacetime to accelerated frame. The corresponding metric is also obtained which we call as rainbow-Rindler metric. So far we are aware of, no body has done it in a concrete manner. Here this is found from the first principle and hence all the parameters are properly identified. The advant…
We investigate the Unruh effect for a massless scalar field in the two dimensional Minkowski space in the presence of a uniformly accelerated perfect mirror, with the trajectory of the mirror chosen in such a way that the mirror completely masks the Rindler horizon from the space-time region of interest. We find that the characteristic thermodynamical properties of the effect remain unchanged, i.e. the response of a uniformly co-accelerated Unruh detector and the distribution of the Rindler particles retain their thermal form. However, since in this setup there are no unobserved degrees of fre…
We investigate the transition probability of a Unruh-deWitt particle detector evolving in flat space and in a wormhole spacetime, in various scenarios. In Minkowski space, we look at the response of the detector on trajectories having discontinuities and rapid variations, as well as the effect of finite-time coupling. It is found that these features induce spurious oscillations in the probability and rate of transition. At large times the oscillations are damped and the probability tends to a constant value. Next, we look at the response of an inertial detector on a radial trajectory that pass…
We investigate the relation between the time-ordered vacuum correlation functions for interacting real scalar fields in Minkowski spacetime and in the Rindler wedge. The correlation functions are constructed perturbatively within the in-in formalism, often employed in calculations in more general spacetimes. We prove to all orders in perturbation theory that the time-ordered vacuum correlation functions can be calculated in the in-in formalism with internal vertices restricted to any Rindler wedge containing the external points. This implies that the Minkowski in-in (or in-out) perturbative ex…
We derive the solutions of gravitational waves in the future (F) expanding and the past (P) shrinking Kanser spacetimes as well as in the left (L) and right (R) Rindler wedges in the Regge-Wheeler gauge. The solutions for all metric components are obtained in an analytic form in each region. We identify the master variables, which are equivalent to massless scalar fields, to describe the gravitational degrees of freedom for the odd parity and even parity modes under the transformation in the two-dimensional plane symmetric space. Then, the master variables are quantized, and we develop the qua…
We examine the influence of the dispersion relation on the Unruh effect by Lorentz boosting the phase of Minkowski vacuum fluctuations endowed with an arbitrary dispersion relation. We find that, unlike what happens with a linear dispersion relation exhibited by massless fields, thermality is lost for general dispersion relations. We show that thermality emerges with a varying "apparent" Davies-Unruh temperature depending on the acceleration of the observer and on the degree of departure from linearity of the dispersion relation. The approach has the advantage of being intuitive and able to pi…
We derive a master equation for the reduced density matrix of a uniformly accelerating quantum detector in arbitrary dimensions, generically coupled to a field initially in its vacuum state, and analyze its late time regime. We find that such density matrix asymptotically reaches a Gibbs state. The particularities of its evolution towards this state are encoded in the response function, which depends on the dimension, the properties of the fields, and the specific coupling to them. We also compare this situation with the thermalization of a static detector immersed in a thermal field state, pi…
We consider a pair of two-level Unruh-DeWitt detectors accelerated uniformly in the Minkowski vacuum of a massless neutral scalar field, and analyze, within the perturbation theory, the entanglement extracted from the vacuum into the Unruh-DeWitt detectors when the switching of the detectors are performed adiabatically enough at the asymptotic past and future. We consider the cases where the detectors are accelerated parallelly, anti-parallelly, and in differently orientated directions. We show that entanglement is extracted if they are accelerated anti-parallelly and the ratios of the excitat…
