Moving Mirrors and Thermodynamic Paradoxes

TL;DR

This paper argues that thermodynamic paradoxes in moving mirror models are due to unrealistic assumptions, and that more accurate models accounting for quantum uncertainty and internal mirror modes eliminate these paradoxes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that treating mirrors as external classical fields leads to paradoxes, and emphasizes the need for quantum models with finite reflectivity and internal modes.

Findings

Exotic energy-transfer effects are below credible scales.

Quantum uncertainty in the mirror's state suppresses paradoxical effects.

More realistic models require second-quantized descriptions of mirrors.

Abstract

Quantum fields responding to "moving mirrors" have been predicted to give rise to thermodynamic paradoxes. I show that the assumption in such work that the mirror can be treated as an external field is invalid: the exotic energy-transfer effects necessary to the paradoxes are well below the scales at which the model is credible. For a first-quantized point-particle mirror, it appears that exotic energy-transfers are lost in the quantum uncertainty in the mirror's state. An accurate accounting of these energies will require a model which recognizes the mirror's finite reflectivity, and almost certainly a model which allows for the excitation of internal mirror modes, that is, a second-quantized model.