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