Anti-Unruh Phenomena

TL;DR

This paper reveals that under certain conditions, a uniformly accelerated detector can cool down with increased acceleration, challenging the traditional understanding of the Unruh effect by showing relativistic effects can lead to cooling.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a detector coupled to the vacuum can experience cooling at higher accelerations, providing new insights into relativistic quantum effects and the Unruh phenomenon.

Findings

Detector temperature decreases with acceleration in certain regimes

Finite-time coupling still satisfies the KMS condition

Contrasts with expected heating from the Unruh effect

Abstract

We find that a uniformly accelerated particle detector coupled to the vacuum can cool down as its acceleration increases, due to relativistic effects. We show that in (1+1)-dimensions, a detector coupled to the scalar field vacuum for finite timescales (but long enough to satisfy the KMS condition) has a KMS temperature that decreases with acceleration, in certain regimes. This contrasts with the heating that one would expect from the Unruh effect.