Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Access by Xinjiang University

Uniformly accelerated observer in a thermal bath

Sanved Kolekar*

  • IUCAA, Pune University Campus, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411007, India

  • *sanved@iucaa.ernet.in

Phys. Rev. D 89, 044036 – Published 20 February, 2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.89.044036

Abstract

We investigate the quantum field aspects in flat spacetime for a uniformly accelerated observer moving in a thermal bath. In particular, we obtain an exact closed expression of the reduced density matrix for a uniformly accelerated observer with acceleration a=2πT when the state of the quantum field is a thermal bath at temperature T. We find that the density matrix has a simple form with an effective partition function Z being a product, Z=ZTZT, of two thermal partition functions corresponding to temperatures T and T and hence is not thermal, even when T=T. We show that, even though the partition function has a product structure, the two thermal baths are, in fact, interacting systems; although in the high frequency limit ωkT and ωkT, the interactions are found to become subdominant. We further demonstrate that the resulting spectrum of the Rindler particles can be interpreted in terms of spontaneous and stimulated emission due to the background thermal bath. The density matrix is also found to be symmetric in the acceleration temperature T and the thermal bath temperature T indicating that thermodynamic experiments alone cannot distinguish between the thermal effects due to T and those due to T. The entanglement entropy associated with the reduced density matrix (with the background contribution of the Davies-Unruh bath removed) is shown to satisfy, in the ωkT limit, a first law of thermodynamics relation of the form TδS=δE, where δE is the difference in the energies corresponding to the reduced density matrix and the background Davies-Unruh bath. The implications are discussed.

Article Text

References (13)

  1. P. C. W. Davies, J. Phys. A 8, 609 (1975).
  2. W. G. Unruh, Phys. Rev. D 14, 870 (1976).
  3. The response rate of the Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a thermal bath was investigated by T. Padmanabhan and T. P. Singh, Phys. Rev. D 38, 2457 (1988); and by S. S. Costa and G. E. A. Matsas, 52, 3466 (1995). However, one should note that these are not first principle derivations and contain prescriptions which involve taking suitable thermal weightages of different excited states.
  4. J. Doukas, G. Adesso, S. Pirandola, and A. Dragan, arXiv:1306.4474.
  5. S. Deser and O. Levin, Classical Quantum Gravity 14, L163 (1997).
  6. D. Marolf, D. Minic, and S. Ross, Phys. Rev. D 69, 064006 (2004).
  7. T. Padmanabhan, Rep. Prog. Phys. 73, 046901 (2010).
  8. Sanved Kolekar and T. Padmanabhan, arXiv:1308.6289.
  9. Bryce DeWitt, The Global Approach to Quantum Field Theory (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2003); N. D. Birrell and P. C. W. Davies, Quantum Fields in Curved Space (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1982).
  10. S. S. Costa and G. E. A. Matsas, Phys. Rev. D 52, 3466 (1995).
  11. R. Wald, Phys. Rev. D 13, 3176 (1976); J. D. Bekenstein and A Meisels, 15, 2775 (1977).
  12. J. D. Bekenstein, Phys. Rev. D 12, 3077 (1975).
  13. Sanved Kolekar and T. Padmanabhan, Phys. Rev. D 86, 104057 (2012).

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation