General features of the thermalization of particle detectors and the Unruh effect
| Autor: | T. Rick Perche |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: |
Physics
High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics Field (physics) Spacetime 010308 nuclear & particles physics Time evolution FOS: Physical sciences Order (ring theory) General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) 01 natural sciences General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Operator (computer programming) Unruh effect High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) Quantum mechanics 0103 physical sciences Minkowski space Quantum field theory Quantum Physics (quant-ph) 010306 general physics |
| Popis: | We study the thermalization of smeared particle detectors that couple locally to $any$ operator in a quantum field theory in curved spacetimes. We show that if the field state satisfies the KMS condition with inverse temperature $\beta$ with respect to the detector's local notion of time evolution, reasonable assumptions ensure that the probe thermalizes to the temperature $1/\beta$ in the limit of long interaction times. Our method also imposes bounds on the size of the system with respect to its proper acceleration and spacetime curvature in order to accurately probe the KMS temperature of the field. We then apply this formalism to a uniformly accelerated detector probing the Minkowski vacuum of any CPT symmetric quantum field theory, and show that the detector thermalizes to the Unruh temperature, independently of the operator it couples to. This exemplifies yet again the robustness of the Unruh effect, even when arbitrary smeared detectors are used to probe general operators in a quantum field theory. Comment: revtex4-1, 10 pages + appendices. Version 2: fixed minor typos and added a short discussion regarding experimental implementability |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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