Acceleration as refrigeration: Acceleration-induced spontaneous symmetry breaking in thermal medium

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that uniform acceleration acts like cooling, enhancing spontaneous symmetry breaking and increasing critical temperatures in field theories, exemplified by the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model.

Contribution

It introduces the concept that acceleration can induce effects similar to cooling, leading to symmetry breaking enhancement in quantum field theories.

Findings

Acceleration increases the critical temperature of chiral phase transition.

Uniform acceleration enhances mass gap generation in fermionic systems.

The derived dependence of critical temperature on acceleration applies broadly to field theories.

Abstract

We argue that a uniform acceleration of matter produces an effect similar to cooling, thus leading, in particular, to the enhancement effect of spontaneous symmetry breaking. This conclusion is supported by the observation by Unruh and Weiss that thermal correlation functions computed at a temperature equal to the Unruh temperature are identical to the corresponding correlation functions in a Minkowski (zero-temperature) vacuum. We consider an example of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model in a co-accelerating reference frame and show that the uniform acceleration of hot gas of interacting fermions enhances the mass gap generation and increases the critical temperature of the chiral transition. We derive a simple dependence of the critical temperature of a second-order phase transition on acceleration that, as we argue, should be applicable to a broad range of field theories.