Excited by a quantum field: Does shape matter?
arXiv:gr-qc/0609062 · doi:10.1088/1742-6596/68/1/012014
Abstract
The instantaneous transition rate of an arbitrarily accelerated Unruh-DeWitt particle detector on four-dimensional Minkowski space is ill defined without regularisation. We show that Schlicht's regularisation as the zero-size limit of a Lorentz-function spatial profile yields a manifestly well-defined transition rate with physically reasonable asymptotic properties. In the special case of stationary trajectories, including uniform acceleration, we recover the results that have been previously obtained by a regularisation that relies on the stationarity. Finally, we discuss evidence for the conjecture that the zero-size limit of the transition rate is independent of the detector profile.
7 pages, uses jpconf. Talk given at NEB XII (Nafplio, Greece, 29 June - 2 July 2006)
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