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Thermality of circular motion

Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery

An observer in uniform linear acceleration responds to the Minkowski vacuum thermally, in the Unruh temperature $T_U =\frac{proper\, acceleration}{2 \pi}$. An observer in uniform circular motion experiences a similar Unruh-type temperature $T_c$, with better prospects of detection in analogue spacetime laboratory experiments, but $T_c$ depends not just on the proper acceleration but also on the orbital radius and on the excitation energy. We establish a range of analytic and numerical results for $T_c$ for a massless scalar field in $3+1$ and $2+1$ spacetime dimensions, the latter being motivated by proposed condensed matter experiments. In particular, we find that the circular motion analogue Unruh temperature grows arbitrarily large in the near-sonic limit, encouragingly for the experimental prospects, but less quickly in effective spacetime dimension $2+1$ than in $3+1$. [Based on Biermann et al, Phys. Rev. D 102, 085006 (2020)]

Mathematics; Relativity And Gravitational Theory; Quantum Theory; Mathematical Physics

video/mp4

Author affiliation: University of Nottingham

2023-10-21

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86245

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/