Generalized Unruh effect and Lamb shift for atoms on arbitrary stationary trajectories

Audretsch, Jürgen; Müller, Rainer; Holzmann, Markus

doi:10.1088/0264-9381/12/12/010

Cited by 69 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…There are some interesting features to be noted as compared to the case without any boundary. First, the rate of change of the mean atomic excitation energy is now a function of the distance to the boundary and it dies off in an oscillatory way the boundary is approached, and second, the contribution of radiation reaction is now dependent on the acceleration of the atom, in sharp contrast to the unbounded Minkowski space where it has been shown that for accelerated atoms on arbitrary stationary trajectory, the contribution of radiation reaction is generally not altered from its inertial value [9].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Audretsch, Müeller and Holzmann [7,8,9] have generalized the formalism of DDC [6] to evaluate vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction contributions to the spontaneous excitation rate and radiative energy shifts of an accelerated two-level atom interacting with a scalar field in a unbounded Minkowski space. In particular, their results show that when an atom is accelerated, then the delicate balance between vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction is altered since the contribution of vacuum fluctuations to the rate of change of the mean excitation energy is modified while that of the radiation reaction remains the same.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Erratum: Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom in a spacetime with a reflecting plane boundary [Phys. Rev. DPRVDAQ0556-282172, 064022 (2005)10.1103/PhysRevD.72.064022]

Yu¹,

Shen²

2006

Phys. Rev. D

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We study a two-level atom in interaction with a real massless scalar quantum field in a spacetime with a reflecting boundary. The presence of the boundary modifies the quantum fluctuations of the scalar field, which in turn modifies the radiative properties of atoms. We calculate the rate of change of the mean atomic energy of the atom for both inertial motion and uniform acceleration.It is found that the modifications induced by the presence of a boundary make the spontaneous radiation rate of an excited inertial atom to oscillate near the boundary and this oscillatory behavior may offer a possible opportunity for experimental tests for geometrical (boundary) effects in flat spacetime. While for accelerated atoms, the transitions from ground states to excited states are found to be possible even in vacuum due to changes in the vacuum fluctuations induced by both the presence of the boundary and the acceleration of atoms, and this can be regarded as an actual physical process underlying the Unruh effect.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Erratum: Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom in a spacetime with a reflecting plane boundary [Phys. Rev. DPRVDAQ0556-282172, 064022 (2005)10.1103/PhysRevD.72.064022]

Yu¹,

Shen²

2006

Phys. Rev. D

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“…We remark that the DDC formalism was also successfully implemented in many interesting physical situations [43][44][45][46][47], including quantum fields in curved spacetime [48][49][50]. For uniformly accelerated atoms, such a method quantitatively motivates the scenario presented in [51].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Radiative processes of two entangled atoms outside a Schwarzschild black hole

Menezes

2016

Phys. Rev. D

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We consider radiative processes of a quantum system composed by two identical two-level atoms in a black-hole background. We assume that these identical two-level atoms are placed at fixed radial distances outside a Schwarzschild black hole and interacting with a quantum electromagnetic field prepared in one of the usual vacuum states, namely the Boulware, Unruh or the Hartle-Hawking vacuum states. We study the structure of the rate of variation of the atomic energy. The intention is to identify in a quantitative way the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the entanglement generation between the atoms as well as the degradation of entangled states in the presence of an event horizon. We find that for a finite observation time the atoms can become entangled for the case of the field in the Boulware vacuum state, even if they are initially prepared in a separable state. In addition, the rate of variation of atomic energy is not well behaved at the event horizon due to the behavior of the proper accelerations of the atoms. We show that the thermal nature of the Hartle-Hawking and Unruh vacuum state allows the atoms to get entangled even if they were initially prepared in the separable ground state.

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“…It is therefore relevant to investigate theoretically all physical manifestations of the Unruh effect in different physical systems, as well as possible experimental setups to detect this elusive phenomenon at the boundary between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Recently, radiative properties of atoms in noninertial motion [14,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] or atoms at rest immersed in a thermal bath [37][38][39][40], have been investi-gated, also aiming for proposals of experimental verifications of the Unruh effect. The main aim of these investigations is also to explore the effect of a uniform acceleration on the dynamical properties of atomic systems, and at which extent the Unruh equivalence of acceleration and temperature is valid.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resonance interaction energy between two accelerated identical atoms in a coaccelerated frame and the Unruh effect

2016

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We investigate the resonance interaction energy between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state, in the reference frame coaccelerating with the atoms. We assume that one atom is excited and the other in the ground state, and that they are prepared in their correlated symmetric or antisymmetric state. Using perturbation theory, we separate, at the second order in the atom-field coupling, the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction field to the energy shift of the interacting system. We show that only the radiation reaction term contributes to the resonance interaction between the two atoms, while Unruh thermal fluctuations, related to the vacuum fluctuations contribution, do not affect the resonance interatomic interaction. We also show that the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated atoms, recently investigated in the comoving (locally inertial) frame, can be recovered in the coaccelerated frame, without the additional assumption of the Fulling-Davies-Unruh temperature for the quantum fields (as necessary for the Lamb shift, for example). This indicates, in the case considered, the equivalence between the coaccelerated frame and the locally inertial frame.

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Generalized Unruh effect and Lamb shift for atoms on arbitrary stationary trajectories

Cited by 69 publications

References 14 publications

Erratum: Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom in a spacetime with a reflecting plane boundary [Phys. Rev. DPRVDAQ0556-282172, 064022 (2005)10.1103/PhysRevD.72.064022]

Erratum: Spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom in a spacetime with a reflecting plane boundary [Phys. Rev. DPRVDAQ0556-282172, 064022 (2005)10.1103/PhysRevD.72.064022]

Radiative processes of two entangled atoms outside a Schwarzschild black hole

Resonance interaction energy between two accelerated identical atoms in a coaccelerated frame and the Unruh effect

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