Thermal fluctuations of a quantized massive scalar field in Rindler background

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermal fluctuations of a massive scalar field in Rindler spacetime, revealing that these fluctuations deviate from Minkowski form when expressed in local temperature, and compares Minkowski vacuum fluctuations with existing literature.

Contribution

It introduces a method to compute thermal fluctuations in Rindler space using point-splitting and analyzes their deviation from Minkowski behavior for massive fields.

Findings

Thermal fluctuations differ from Minkowski form for massive fields.

Minkowski vacuum fluctuations as seen by accelerated observers are characterized.

The approach provides a comparison with existing literature on vacuum fluctuations.

Abstract

Thermal fluctuations for a massive scalar field in the Rindler wedge are obtained by applying the point-splitting procedure to the zero temperature Feynman propagator in a conical spacetime. Renormalization is implemented by removing the zero temperature contribution. It is shown that for a field of non vanishing mass the thermal fluctuations, when expressed in terms of the local temperature, do not have Minkowski form. As a by product, Minkowski vacuum fluctuations seen by an uniformly accelerated observer are determined and confronted with the literature.