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 and the scaling dimension 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 . 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.
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}
}