Is there emitted radiation in Unruh effect?
Abstract
The thermal radiance felt by a uniformly accelerated detector/oscillator/atom--the Unruh effect-- is often mistaken to be some emitted radiation detectable by an observer/probe/sensor. Here we show by an explicit calculation of the energy momentum tensor of a quantum scalar field that, at least in 1+1 dimension, while a polarization cloud is found to exist around the particle trajectory, there is no emitted radiation from a uniformly accelerated oscillator in equilibrium conditions. Under nonequilibrium conditions which can prevail for non-uniformly accelerated trajectories or before the atom or oscillator reaches equilibrium, there is conceivably radiation emitted, but that is not what Unruh effect entails.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0012134,
title = {Is there emitted radiation in Unruh effect?},
author = {B. L. Hu and Alpan Raval},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0012134},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Invited talk given by BLH at Capri Workshop on Quantum Aspects of Beam Physics, Oct. 2000. 10 pages, no figures