The Lamb shift in de Sitter spacetime

Abstract

We study the Lamb shift of both freely-falling and static two-level atoms in interaction with quantized conformally coupled massless scalar fields in the de Sitter-invariant vacuum. We find that the Lamb shifts of both freely-falling and static atoms are in structural similarity to that of an inertial atom immersed in a thermal bath in a Minkowski spacetime. For the freely-falling atom, the Lamb shift gets a correction as if it was immersed in a thermal bath at the Gibbons-Hawking temperature, thus revealing clearly the intrinsic thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime. For the static atom, the Lamb shift is affected by a combination of the effect of the intrinsic thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and the Unruh effect associated with the inherent acceleration of the atom.

11 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in PRD

References in corpus (7)

• The dS/CFT Correspondence
• Inflation and the dS/CFT Correspondence
• Accelerated Detectors and Temperature in (Anti) de Sitter Spaces
• Radiative energy shifts of accelerated atoms
• Position dependent energy level shifts of an accelerated atom in the presence of a boundary
• Thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and spontaneous excitation of atoms
• Lamb Shift for static atoms outside a Schwarzschild black hole

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Thermal and non-thermal signatures of the Unruh effect in Casimir-Polder forces
• Open Quantum Entanglement: A study of two atomic system in static patch of de Sitter space
• Spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated atom coupled with vacuum Dirac field fluctuations
• Geometric phase of two-level atoms and thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime
• Quantum entanglement generation in de Sitter spacetime
• Entropic uncertainty relation in de Sitter space
• Detecting the Curvature of de Sitter Universe with Two Entangled Atoms
• Boundarylike behaviors of the resonance interatomic energy in a cosmic string spacetime
• Relating the curvature of De Sitter Universe to Open Quantum Lamb Shift Spectroscopy
• Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom coupled with quantum fluctuations of spacetime
• Probing long-range properties of vacuum altered by uniformly accelerating two spatially separated Unruh-DeWitt detectors
• The Lamb shift in the BTZ spacetime
• Atom-field dynamics in curved spacetime
• Spontaneous excitation of a centripetally accelerated atom coupled to electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations near a reflecting boundary