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

DOI10.1088/0264-9381/12/12/010zbMATH Open0838.53058arXivquant-ph/9510025OpenAlexW2079703038MaRDI QIDQ4864070FDOQ4864070

Authors: Jürgen Audretsch, Rainer Müller, Markus Holzmann 

Publication date: 11 June 1996

Published in: Classical and Quantum Gravity (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We study the spontaneous de-excitation and excitation of accelerated atoms on arbitrary stationary trajectories (``generalized Unruh effect). We consider the effects of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction separately. We show that radiation reaction is generally not altered by stationary acceleration, whereas the contribution of vacuum fluctuations differs for all stationary accelerated trajectories from its inertial value. Spontaneous excitation from the ground state occurs for all { accelerated stationary} trajectories and is therefore the ``normal case. We furthermore show that the radiative energy shift (``Lamb shift) of a two-level atom is modified by acceleration for all stationary trajectories. Again only vacuum fluctuations give rise to the shift. Our results are illustrated for the special case of an atom in circular motion, which may be experimentally relevant.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9510025

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zbMATH Keywords

radiation reactionvacuum fluctuationsgeneralized Unruh effect

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Applications of differential geometry to physics (53Z05) Atomic physics (81V45)

Cited In (19)

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• ON THE RELATION BETWEEN UNRUH AND SOKOLOV–TERNOV EFFECTS
• Stationary worldline power distributions
• The power spectrum of the circular noise
• Quantum vacuum radiation and detection proposals
• Interaction potential of two nonidentical ground-state atoms
• Response of a uniformly accelerated detector to massless Rarita-Schwinger fields in vacuum
• Spontaneous excitation of a circularly accelerated atom coupled to electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations
• Spontaneous excitation of a circularly accelerated atom coupled with vacuum Dirac field fluctuations
• Energy shift of a uniformly moving two-level atom through a thermal reservoir
• Quantum Fisher information as a probe for Unruh thermality
• The formalism for energy changing rate of an accelerated atom coupled with electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations
• Relative energy shift of a two-level atom in a cylindrical spacetime
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• SELF-COUPLING OF EXCITED ATOMS IN CURVED SPACE–TIME
• Understanding thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime via inter-detector interaction
• EFFECTS OF A BOUNDARY ON SPONTANEOUS EXCITATION OF AN ACCELERATED MULTILEVEL ATOM COUPLED WITH THE DERIVATIVE OF SCALAR FIELDS
• The effect of vacuum fluctuations on quantum metrology for a uniformly accelerated atom

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