We propose a test for the circular Unruh effect using certain atoms – fluorine and oxygen. For these atoms the centripetal acceleration of the outer shell electrons implies an effective Unruh temperature in the range 1000–2000 K. This range of Unruh temperatures is large enough to shift the expected occupancy of the lowest energy level and nearby energy levels. In effect the Unruh temperature c...

First order corrections to the Unruh effect are calculated from a model of an accelerated particle detector of finite mass. We show that quantum smearing of the trajectory and large recoil essentially do not modify the Unruh effect. Nevertheless, we find corrections to the thermal distribution and to the Unruh temperature. In a certain limit, when the distribution at equilibrium remains exactly...

The aim of these notes is both to review the standard understanding of the Hawking effect, and to discuss the modifications to this understanding that might be required by new physics at short distances. The fundamentals of the Unruh effect are reviewed, and then the Hawking effect is explained as a " gravitational Unruh effect " , with particular attention to the state-dependence of this pictu...

We discuss the Starobinskii-Unruh process for the Kerr black hole. We show how this effect is related to the theory of squeezed states. We then consider a simple model for a highly relativistic rotating star and show that the Starobinskii-Unruh effect is absent.

We present a Kaluza-Klein reduction for the Unruh response that a brane, in an AdS bulk would experience due to its acceleration. The Unruh radiation is realised as particle production on the brane for each of the Kaluza-Klein modes. A correction, coming from the massive modes, is calculated for the standard Unruh effect in Minkowski spacetime and it is found that the response coming from these...

We give a complete and rigorous proof of the Unruh effect, in the following form. We show that the state of a two-level system, uniformly accelerated with proper acceleration a, and coupled to a scalar bose field initially in the Minkowski vacuum state will converge, asymptotically in the detector’s proper time, to the Gibbs state at inverse temperature β = 2π a . The result also holds if the f...

We discuss the decay of accelerated protons and illustrate how the FullingDavies-Unruh effect is indeed mandatory to maintain the consistency of standard Quantum Field Theory. The confidence level of the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect must be the same as that of Quantum Field Theory itself.

We show that a detector acquires a Berry phase due to its motion in spacetime. The phase is different in the inertial and accelerated case as a direct consequence of the Unruh effect. We exploit this fact to design a novel method to measure the Unruh effect. Surprisingly, the effect is detectable for accelerations 10(9) times smaller than previous proposals sustained only for times of nanoseconds.