English

Probing Unruh Effect from Enhanced Decoherence

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-04-29 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

We investigate the decoherence of an Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to scalar, electromagnetic, and spinor fields in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. By employing the Schwinger-Keldysh influence functional formalism, we derive a universal scaling law relating the decoherence rate to the proper acceleration aa and the scaling dimension Δ\Delta of the environmental field operator. By analyzing both sharp (top-hat) and smooth Gaussian switching functions, it is shown that the decoherence rate in the asymptotic long-time limit scales as a2Δ1a^{2\Delta-1}. This scaling indicates that increasing scaling dimension of the coupling field operators can significantly enhance the decoherence, thereby providing a more sensitive probe of the Unruh effect.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.26121,
  title  = {Probing Unruh Effect from Enhanced Decoherence},
  author = {Ran Li and Zhong-Xiao Man and Jin Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.26121},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:40:18.420Z