Particle creation in a colliding plane wave spacetime: wave packet quantization

Abstract

We use wave packet mode quantization to compute the creation of massless scalar quantum particles in a colliding plane wave spacetime. The background spacetime represents the collision of two gravitational shock waves followed by trailing gravitational radiation which focus into a Killing-Cauchy horizon. The use of wave packet modes simplifies the problem of mode propagation through the different spacetime regions which was previously studied with the use of monocromatic modes. It is found that the number of particles created in a given wave packet mode has a thermal spectrum with a temperature which is inversely proportional to the focusing time of the plane waves and which depends on the mode trajectory.

23, latex, figures available by fax

Cited by in corpus (6)

• A Kinetic Theory Approach to Quantum Gravity
• Invariance of Unruh and Hawking radiation under matter-induced supertranslations
• Quantum fields interacting with colliding plane waves: the stress-energy tensor and backreaction
• Particle Creation in the Bell-Szekeres Spacetime
• Stress-energy tensor in colliding plane wave space-times: An approximation procedure
• Stress-energy tensor in the Bel-Szekeres space-time