Polarization of the Fulling-Rindler vacuum by uniformly accelerated mirror

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how a uniformly accelerated mirror affects the vacuum state of a scalar and electromagnetic field in Rindler spacetime, revealing polarization effects and boundary influences on energy-momentum tensor expectations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed calculation of vacuum expectation values for scalar and electromagnetic fields near an accelerated boundary in Rindler spacetime, including boundary and horizon effects.

Findings

Vacuum energy-momentum tensor dominated by boundary near the plate surface

Main contribution to expectation values at large distances comes from Rindler region

Electromagnetic field energy density is negative near the horizon and positive near the plate

Abstract

Positive frequency Wightman function and vacuum expectation values of the energy-momentum tensor are computed for a massive scalar field with general curvature coupling parameter and satisfying Robin boundary condition on a uniformly accelerated infinite plate. The both regions of the right Rindler wedge, (i) on the right (RR region) and (ii) on the left (RL region) of the plate are investigated. For the case (ii) the electromagnetic field is considered as well. The mode summation method is used with combination of a variant of the generalized Abel-Plana formula. This allows to present the expectation values in the form of a sum of the purely Rindler and boundary parts. Near the plate surface the vacuum energy-momentum tensor is dominated by the boundary term. At large distances from the plate and near the Rindler horizon the main contribution comes from the purely Rindler part. In the RL region the vacuum energy density of the electromagnetic field is negative near the horizon and is positive near the plate.