Hyperbolic recoil and the Unruh effect at CERN-NA63

TL;DR

This paper investigates the influence of the Unruh effect on high-energy synchrotron radiation in CERN-NA63 data, proposing a new formalism with hyperbolic recoil acceleration that predicts Unruh dominance at high photon energies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formalism incorporating the Unruh effect via hyperbolic recoil acceleration into synchrotron radiation analysis, extending beyond classical and quasi-classical models.

Findings

Unruh effect saturates the radiation spectrum above a certain photon energy threshold.

The new formalism aligns with experimental data, showing Unruh dominance at high energies.

Classical and quasi-classical models are insufficient to explain the observed spectrum saturation.

Abstract

In this manuscript we examine the high energy channeling radiation data sets from the CERN-NA63 experiment using ultra relativistic synchrotron emission. To incorporate recoil, we examine the standard quasi-classical formalism as well as develop a formalism which includes the Unruh effect by utilizing a hyperbolic recoil acceleration, based on conservation of momentum, in the classical synchrotron trajectory. We also perform an asymptotic radiation time scale analysis which predicts a photon energy threshold, beyond which the Unruh effect dominates. We then compare the classical, quasi-classical, and Unruh synchrotron theories to the data. We find that above threshold, the Unruh effect saturates the spectrum of all data sets.