The Unruh effect

When studying for the uniform acceleration presentation, I was reminded of a wierd effect in the intersection between general relativity and quantum field theory, called the Unruh effect. It may blow your mind or simply make you shrug. I thought it prudent to present it anyhow, as it certainly blew my mind.

I did not put as much work into this as I would like. But the real justification for this effect is a bit beyond my scope, so you will have to make do with a popular science version akin to how the Hawking's radiation (radiation from black holes) is presented in popular science.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_effect
and
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Cambridge-Monographs-Mathematical-Physics/dp/05...

Errata: I marveled that my simple popular science approach yielded the correct formula and not only a proportionality, but that was a bit premature. As you may recall, there was a 'pi' in my earlier expression of the temperature as a function of acceleration, which did not appear in the semi-classical dimensionality argument. So it wasn't that big of a fluke, after all. Good thing, really.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• relativity
• uniform
• acceleration
• accelerating
• astronomy
• science
• lecture
• event
• horizon
• quantum
• field
• foam

[dannykanoista]

Interesting.

[trondreitan]

Thanks!

[jas2754]

Thank You...Some of your description sounds similar to the description given of evaporation of Black Holes. At the event horizon vacuum flucuations creat a particle / antiparticle pair, and one particle is able to escape the Black Hole(it is just outside the horizon),the other not...what do you think?

[trondreitan]

That's a correct observation. The evaporation of black holes, known as Hawkings radiation has basically the same explanation as the Unruh effect. I've even heard that one can use the Unruh effect to describe Hawkings radiation, as any static system near a black hole can be locally approximated by a uniformly accelerated system.

[19cake69]

and your what 12 maybe?  keep your comments to yourself little boy

[GodOfBranson17]

Your gay.

[starramus]

Hawking radiation, the Unruh effect, and Casimir light (sonoluminescence) are all produced by the same mechanism of converting virtual photons into real photons. Julian Schwinger put this idea forward and I agree with him. Sonoluminescence may well be the key to unlocking forces so powerful they would tend to be cosmological.

[WaiteDavid137]

Its an interesting speculation, but thats all it is for now. Unrah radiation doesn't actually exist, at least as far as I'm concerned until there is some experimental evidence for it.

[jas2754]

Thank You ... that makes sense that you can use the Unruh effect to describe HAwkings Radiation.