Quantum gravity corrections to the spontaneous excitation of an accelerated atom interacting with a quantum scalar field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum gravity effects, modeled by the GUP, influence the spontaneous emission and excitation rates of a two-level atom in various motion states, revealing potential observable consequences at low energies.

Contribution

It introduces GUP-induced corrections to atomic radiative properties and analyzes their impact on atoms in inertial, accelerated, and circular motions, highlighting the amplification effect of acceleration.

Findings

GUP modifies spontaneous emission rates for inertial atoms.

GUP affects both emission and excitation rates in non-inertial motions.

Acceleration can significantly amplify GUP effects on atomic transition rates.

Abstract

The Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP) extends the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) by suggesting a minimum observable scale that includes the effects of quantum gravity, which is supposed to potentially result in observable effects far below the Planck energy scale, providing us the opportunity to explore the theory of quantum gravity through physical processes at low energy scale. In present work, we study the corrections induced by the GUP to the spontaneous radiation properties of a two-level atom interacting with a real massless scalar quantum field based on the DDC formalism. The GUP alters the correlation function of the scalar field, consequently affecting the radiative properties of atoms. We calculate the rate of change in the mean atomic energy for an atom undergoing inertial motion, uniform acceleration, and uniform circular motion. We show that the GUP can modify the spontaneous emission rate of an excited-state atom in inertial motion; however, it does not alter the stability of the ground-state atom in vacuum. For an atom in uniformly accelerated and uniformly circular motions, the GUP can change both its spontaneous emission and excitation rates; moreover, the corrections caused by the GUP contains the terms proportional to $\beta a^2$ or $\beta a^3$, suggesting that the proper acceleration $a$ of an atom in non-inertial motions could significantly amplify the effect of the GUP on the spontaneous transition rates of the atom.