Search results for "Unruh effect"
showing 10 items of 17 documents
Lamb shift of a uniformly accelerated hydrogen atom in the presence of a conducting plate
2009
We investigate the effects of acceleration on the energy-level shifts of a hydrogen atom interacting with the electromagnetic field and in the presence of an infinite perfectly conducting plate. We consider the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and of the radiation reaction field to the Lamb shift, and we discuss their dependence from the acceleration of the atom. We show that, because of the presence of the boundary, both vacuum field fluctuations and radiation reaction field contributions are affected by atomic acceleration. In particular, the effect of the vacuum field fluctuations on the energy-level shifts is not equivalent to that of a thermal field. We also discuss the dependence …
Effects of a uniform acceleration on atom–field interactions
2014
We review some quantum electrodynamical effects related to the uniform acceleration of atoms in vacuum. After discussing the energy level shifts of a uniformly accelerated atom in vacuum, we investigate the atom-wall Casimir-Polder force for accelerated atoms, and the van der Waals/Casimir-Polder interaction between two accelerated atoms. The possibility of detecting the Unruh effect through these phenomena is also discussed in detail.
Resonance Dipole-Dipole Interaction Between Two Accelerated Atoms in the Presence of a Reflecting Plane Boundary
2018
We study the resonant dipole-dipole interaction energy between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, one excited and the other in the ground state, prepared in a correlated {\em Bell-type} state, and interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field nearby a perfectly reflecting plate. We suppose the two atoms moving with the same uniform acceleration, parallel to the plane boundary, and that their separation is constant during the motion. We separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction field to the resonance energy shift of the two-atom system, and show that Unruh thermal fluctuations do not affect the resonance interaction, which is exclusivel…
Dispersion Interactions between Neutral Atoms and the Quantum Electrodynamical Vacuum
2018
Dispersion interactions are long-range interactions between neutral ground-state atoms or molecules, or polarizable bodies in general, due to their common interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field. They arise from the exchange of virtual photons between the atoms, and, in the case of three or more atoms, are not additive. In this review, after having introduced the relevant coupling schemes and effective Hamiltonians, as well as properties of the vacuum fluctuations, we~outline the main properties of dispersion interactions, both in the nonretarded (van der Waals) and retarded (Casimir--Polder) regime. We then discuss their deep relation with the existence of the vacuum fluctuation…
Van der Waals and resonance interactions between accelerated atoms in vacuum and the Unruh effect
2017
We discuss different physical effects related to the uniform acceleration of atoms in vacuum, in the framework of quantum electrodynamics. We first investigate the van der Waals/Casimir-Polder dispersion and resonance interactions between two uniformly accelerated atoms in vacuum. We show that the atomic acceleration significantly affects the van der Waals force, yielding a different scaling of the interaction with the interatomic distance and an explicit time dependence of the interaction energy. We argue how these results could allow for an indirect detection of the Unruh effect through dispersion interactions between atoms. We then consider the resonance interaction between two accelerat…
Nonthermal effects of acceleration in the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated atoms
2016
We study the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, one excited and the other in the ground state, prepared in a correlated (symmetric or antisymmetric) state and interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state. In this case (resonance interaction), the interatomic interaction is a second-order effect in the atom-field coupling. We separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the resonance energy shift of the system, and show that only radiation reaction contributes, while Unruh thermal fluctuations do not affect the resonance interaction. We also find that beyond a characteristic length scal…
Continuous-variable entanglement sharing in noninertial frames
2007
We study the distribution of entanglement between modes of a free scalar field from the perspective of observers in uniform acceleration. We consider a two-mode squeezed state of the field from an inertial perspective, and analytically study the degradation of entanglement due to the Unruh effect, in the cases of either one or both observers undergoing uniform acceleration. We find that for two observers undergoing finite acceleration, the entanglement vanishes between the lowest frequency modes. The loss of entanglement is precisely explained as a redistribution of the inertial entanglement into multipartite quantum correlations among accessible and unaccessible modes from a non-inertial p…
Method to compute the stress-energy tensor for a quantized scalar field when a black hole forms from the collapse of a null shell
2020
A method is given to compute the stress-energy tensor for a massless minimally coupled scalar field in a spacetime where a black hole forms from the collapse of a spherically symmetric null shell in four dimensions. Part of the method involves matching the modes for the in vacuum state to a complete set of modes in Schwarzschild spacetime. The other part involves subtracting from the unrenormalized expression for the stress-energy tensor when the field is in the in vacuum state, the corresponding expression when the field is in the Unruh state and adding to this the renormalized stress-energy tensor for the field in the Unruh state. The method is shown to work in the two-dimensional case wh…
Casimir-Polder interaction between an accelerated two-level system and an infinite plate
2007
We investigate the Casimir-Polder interaction energy between a uniformly accelerated two-level system and an infinite plate with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Our model is a two-level atom interacting with a massless scalar field, with a uniform acceleration in a direction parallel to the plate. We consider the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and of the radiation reaction field to the atom-wall Casimir-Polder interaction, and we discuss their dependence on the acceleration of the atom. We show that, as a consequence of the noninertial motion of the two-level atom, a thermal term is present in the vacuum fluctuation contribution to the Casimir-Polder interaction. Finally we discuss the…
Energy-level shifts of a uniformly accelerated atom between two reflecting plates
2011
We discuss the radiative level shifts of a uniformly accelerated atom moving between two infinite reflecting plates and interacting with a massless scalar field in the vacuum state. The atom, supposed to be a two-level system, accelerates in a direction parallel to the conducting plates. We evaluate separately the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction field to the energy shift of the atomic levels, and discuss their dependence on acceleration, atomic position and cavity length.