New Insights into Uniformly Accelerated Detector in a Quantum Field

Abstract

We obtained an exact solution for a uniformly accelerated Unruh-DeWitt detector interacting with a massless scalar field in (3+1) dimensions which enables us to study the entire evolution of the total system, from the initial transient to late-time steady state. We find that the Unruh effect as derived from time-dependent perturbation theory is valid only in the transient stage and is totally invalid for cases with proper acceleration smaller than the damping constant. We also found that, unlike in (1+1)D results, the (3+1)D uniformly accelerated Unruh-DeWitt detector in a steady state does emit a positive radiated power of quantum nature at late-times, but it is not connected to the thermal radiance experienced by the detector in the Unruh effect proper.

6 pages, invited talk given by SYL at the conference of International Association for Relativistic Dynamics (IARD), June 2006, Storrs, Connecticut, USA

References in corpus (4)

• Stochastic Theory of Relativistic Particles Moving in a Quantum Field: II. Scalar Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac-Langevin Equation, Radiation Reaction and Vacuum Fluctuations
• Accelerated Detector - Quantum Field Correlations: From Vacuum Fluctuations to Radiation Flux
• On the Problem of the Uniformly Accelerated Oscillator
• Uniformly Accelerated Charge in a Quantum Field: From Radiation Reaction to Unruh Effect

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Entanglement of the Vacuum between Left, Right, Future, and Past: The Origin of Entanglement-Induced Quantum Radiation
• Simulating accelerated atoms coupled to a quantum field
• Electron response to radiation under linear acceleration: classical, QED and accelerated frame predictions
• Late-time quantum radiation by a uniformly accelerated detector in de Sitter spacetime
• The Unruh-deWitt Detector and the Vacuum in the General Boundary formalism
• Circular Motion of a Small Oscillator in a Zero-Point Field Without External Forces: Is It Possible?