Acceleration and vacuum temperature

Lance Labun, Johann Rafelski

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

The quantum fluctuations of an "accelerated" vacuum state, that is, vacuum fluctuations in the presence of a constant electromagnetic field, can be described by the temperature T M. Considering T M for the gyromagnetic factor g=1 we show that T M(g=1)=T U, where T U is the Unruh temperature experienced by an accelerated observer. We conjecture that both particle production and nonlinear field effects inherent in the Unruh accelerated observer case are described by the case g=1 QED of strong fields. We present rates of particle production for g=0, 1, 2 and show that the case g=1 is experimentally distinguishable from g=0, 2. Therefore, either accelerated observers are distinguishable from accelerated vacuum or there is unexpected modification of the theoretical framework.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number041701
JournalPhysical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
Volume86
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2 2012

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics
  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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