A ground-state atom uniformly accelerated through the Minkowski vacuum can become excited by emitting an Unruh-Minkowski photon. We show that from the perspective of an accelerated atom, the sign of the frequency of the Unruh-Minkowski photons can be positive or negative depending on the acceleration direction. The accelerated atom becomes excited by emitting an Unruh-Minkowski photon which has negative frequency in the atom's frame, and decays by emitting a positive-frequency photon.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Unruh effect predicts a thermal response for an accelerated detector moving through the vacuum. Here we propose an interferometric scheme to observe an analogue of the circular Unruh effect using a localized laser coupled to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Quantum fluctuations in the condensate are governed by an effective relativistic field theory, and as demonstrated, the coupled laser field acts as an effective Unruh-DeWitt detector thereof.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe complete gravitational collapse of a body in general relativity will result in the formation of a black hole. Although the black hole is classically stable, quantum particle creation processes will result in the emission of Hawking radiation to infinity and corresponding mass loss of the black hole, eventually resulting in the complete evaporation of the black hole. Semiclassical arguments strongly suggest that, in the process of black hole formation and evaporation, a pure quantum state will evolve to a mixed state, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHawking argued that black holes emit thermal radiation via a quantum spontaneous emission. To address this issue experimentally, we utilize the analogy between the propagation of fields around black holes and surface waves on moving water. By placing a streamlined obstacle into an open channel flow we create a region of high velocity over the obstacle that can include surface wave horizons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is demonstrated that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in an appropriately designed waveguide is (for large wavelengths) analogous to that within a curved space-time--such as around a black hole. As electromagnetic radiation (e.g.
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