English

Thermodynamic equilibrium with acceleration and the Unruh effect

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2018-04-25 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We address the problem of thermodynamic equilibrium with constant acceleration along the velocity field lines in a quantum relativistic statistical mechanics framework. We show that for a free scalar quantum field, after vacuum subtraction, all mean values vanish when the local temperature T is as low as the Unruh temperature T_U = A/2\pi where A is the magnitude of the acceleration four-vector. We argue that the Unruh temperature is an absolute lower bound for the temperature of any accelerated fluid at global thermodynamic equilibrium. We discuss the conditions of this bound to be applicable in a local thermodynamic equilibrium situation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.08031,
  title  = {Thermodynamic equilibrium with acceleration and the Unruh effect},
  author = {F. Becattini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.08031},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

15 pages, 2 figures; updated version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

R2 v1 2026-06-22T23:26:09.361Z