Accelerating decay with acceleration

TL;DR

This paper models particle decay using accelerated Unruh-deWitt detectors, revealing non-trivial decay patterns and potential observable effects in certain decay processes at extremely high accelerations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of accelerated detectors to study decay rates, uncovering decay rate peaks and estimating conditions for experimental observation.

Findings

Decay rates show non-trivial patterns with peaks at certain accelerations.

Effects could be observed in alpha decay at accelerations around 10^{26} m/s^2.

Lower-energy decays like beta decay may exhibit observable peaks in future experiments.

Abstract

We investigate accelerated Unruh-deWitt detectors as a model for particle decay. We find non-trivial decay rates, including a pattern of peaks in decay rate that extends to lower accelerations. Applying our model to the alpha decay of $\mathrm{^{210}Po}$, we find that effects could be observed with an acceleration of $a\approx 10^{26} \frac{\mathrm{m}}{\mathrm{s}^2}$ as long as that acceleration is controlled to within 1 percent. Although still out of reach of current experimental setups, other decay processes at lower energy, such as beta decay, could result in the peaks we find being within range of future experiments.