Asymptotic states of accelerated detectors and universality of the Unruh effect

Abstract

We treat an Unruh-DeWitt detector as an open quantum system and evaluate the response of a uniformly accelerated detector: (i) interacting locally with the derivatives of a massless scalar field and (ii) linearly coupled to an electromagnetic field. We find that the early-time transition rate of the detector strongly depends on the type of the interaction between the detector and the quantum field, and may not follow a Planck distribution. In contrast, the late time asymptotic state is always thermal at the Unruh temperature and thus provides a more fundamental and persistent characterization of the acceleration temperature: A uniformly accelerated detector experiences the field vacuum as a genuine thermal bath at the Unruh temperature and eventually settles at a thermal state, regardless of their intermediate dynamics or the type of interaction.

18 pages, 2 figures, Updated to match the published version. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.02477

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• Dissipative dynamics of an open quantum battery in the BTZ spacetime
• Assisted harvesting and catalysis of coherence from scalar fields
• Relativistic quantum thermometry through a moving sensor
• Multi-Time Measurements in Hawking Radiation: Information at Higher-Order Correlations
• Quantum Fisher information of a cosmic qubit undergoing non-Markovian de Sitter evolution
• Uniformly accelerated Brownian oscillator in (2+1)D: temperature-dependent dissipation and frequency shift
• Disjointness of inertial KMS states and the role of Lorentz symmetry in thermalization
• Reveal the lost entanglement for accelerated atoms in the high-dimensional spacetime
• Entangled states dynamics of moving two-level atoms in a thermal field bath
• Quantum kicks near a Cauchy horizon
• Dynamical Maps for Accelerating Detectors
• Probing non-equilibrium steady states of the Klein-Gordon field with Unruh-DeWitt detectors