Minkowski-Fock states in accelerated frames

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to analyze Minkowski particle states from the perspective of accelerated observers, revealing how acceleration affects particle detection and correlations in quantum field theory.

Contribution

It introduces a general prescription to compute the characteristic function of Minkowski-Fock states in accelerated frames, enabling analysis of particle numbers and correlations.

Findings

Acceleration influences Rindler particle distributions.

Single-particle and two-particle states become indistinguishable under acceleration.

Observers can detect acceleration through particle correlations.

Abstract

An explicit Wigner formulation of Minkowski particle states for non-inertial observers is unknown. Here, we derive a general prescription to compute the characteristic function for Minkowski-Fock states in accelerated frames. For the special case of single-particle and two-particle states, this method enables to derive mean values of particle numbers and correlation function in the momentum space, and the way they are affected by the acceleration of the observer. We show an indistinguishability between Minkowski single-particle and two-particle states in terms of Rindler particle distribution that can be regarded as a way for the observer to detect any acceleration of the frame. We find that for two-particle states the observer is also able to detect acceleration by measuring the correlation between Rindler particles with different momenta.