States insensitive to the Unruh effect in multi-level detectors

Abstract

We give a general treatment of the spontaneous excitation rates and the non-relativistic Lamb shift of constantly accelerated multi-level atoms as a model for multi-level detectors. Using a covariant formulation of the dipole coupling between the atom and the electromagnetic field we show that new Raman-like transitions can be induced by the acceleration. Under certain conditions these transitions can lead to stable ground and excited states which are not affected by the non inertial motion. The magnitude of the Unruh effect is not altered by multi-level effects. Both the spontaneous excitation rates and the Lamb shift are not within the range of measurability.

9 Pages, latex

References in corpus (7)

• Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom: The contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction
• The Rotating Quantum Vacuum
• Radiative energy shifts of accelerated atoms
• Generalized Unruh effect and Lamb shift for atoms on arbitrary stationary trajectories
• On the Problem of the Uniformly Accelerated Oscillator
• Actio causes reactio: Gravito-optical trapping of three-level atoms
• The Dipole Coupling of Atoms and Light in Gravitational Fields

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Open Quantum Dynamics: Complete Positivity and Entanglement
• Radiation from Atoms Falling into a Black Hole
• Boundary conditions in the Unruh problem
• Lamb Shift of Unruh Detector Levels
• Atom-field dynamics in curved spacetime
• Decoherence of Atomic Gases in Largely Detuned Laser Fields
• Probing non-equilibrium steady states of the Klein-Gordon field with Unruh-DeWitt detectors