On the relation between Unruh and Sokolov--Ternov effects

Abstract

We show that the Sokolov--Ternov effect -- the depolarization of particles in storage rings coming from synchrotron radiation due to spin flip transitions -- is physically equivalent to the Unruh effect for circular acceleration if one uses a spin 1/2 particle as the Unruh--DeWitt detector. It is shown that for the electron, with gyromagnetic number $g\approx 2$, the exponential contribution to the polarization, which usually characterizes the Unruh effect, is "hidden" in the standard Sokolov-Ternov effect making it hard to observe. Thus, our conclusions are different in detail from previous work.

23 pages, no figures

References in corpus (2)

• How often does the Unruh-DeWitt detector click? Regularisation by a spatial profile
• Thermal radiation of various gravitational backgrounds

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Temporal contribution to gravitational WKB-like calculations
• Loss of Spin Entanglement For Accelerated Electrons in Electric and Magnetic Fields