English

A Consistent Histories approach to the Unruh effect

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2016-08-31 v1

Abstract

Using the HPO approach to consistent histories we re-derive Unruh's result that an observer constantly accelerating through the Minkowski vacuum appears to be immersed in a thermal bath. We show that propositions about any symmetry of the system always form a consistent set and that the probabilities associated with such propositions are decided by their value in the initial state. We use this fact to postulate a condition on the decoherence functional in the HPO set-up. Finally we show that the Unruh effect arises from the fact that the initial density matrix corresponding to the inertial vacuum can be written as a thermal density matrix in the Fock basis associated with the accelerating observer.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0005063,
  title  = {A Consistent Histories approach to the Unruh effect},
  author = {D. Noltingk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0005063},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

18 pages LaTeX

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:31:43.230Z