Mirror-enhanced acceleration-induced geometric phase

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experimental method to detect the Unruh effect using mirror-enhanced geometric phases of accelerated atoms, significantly reducing the required acceleration for observation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach leveraging mirrors to amplify the geometric phase, enabling feasible experimental detection of the Unruh effect at lower accelerations.

Findings

Mirror presence significantly enhances the geometric phase.

Lower accelerations are sufficient for experimental detection.

Proposed interferometric setup can measure phase differences.

Abstract

Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect contains great amount of theoretical importance in various branches of physics. Requirement of very high acceleration hinders its experimental evidence. We put forward an idea to experimentally probe this effect by utilizing the Pancharatnam-Berry phase of an accelerated atom in presence of mirrors. We show that for much lower accelerations, the phase gets significantly enhanced in the presence of mirrors. We propose a schematic design of an interferometric set-up to experimentally capture this effect by utilizing the phase difference between an accelerated and an inertial atoms. For the choice of hydrogen atoms and suitable separation between atoms and mirrors, the required acceleration can be very low.