Thermodynamic equilibrium with acceleration and the Unruh effect

Abstract

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.

15 pages, 2 figures; updated version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (3)

• The Unruh effect and its applications
• Local thermodynamical equilibrium and the beta frame for a quantum relativistic fluid
• Local temperatures and local terms in modular Hamiltonians

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