Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2011-09-20
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
29 pages. v2: added and updated references
Scientific paper
We analyse the response of an arbitrarily-accelerated Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a massless scalar field in Minkowski spacetimes of dimensions up to six, working within first-order perturbation theory and assuming a smooth switch-on and switch-off. We express the total transition probability as a manifestly finite and regulator-free integral formula. In the sharp switching limit, the transition probability diverges in dimensions greater than three but the transition rate remains finite up to dimension five. In dimension six, the transition rate remains finite in the sharp switching limit for trajectories of constant scalar proper acceleration, including all stationary trajectories, but it diverges for generic trajectories. The divergence of the transition rate in six dimensions suggests that global embedding spacetime (GEMS) methods for investigating detector response in curved spacetime may have limited validity for generic trajectories when the embedding spacetime has dimension higher than five.
Hodgkinson Lee
Louko Jorma
No associations
LandOfFree
How often does the Unruh-DeWitt detector click beyond four dimensions? does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with How often does the Unruh-DeWitt detector click beyond four dimensions?, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and How often does the Unruh-DeWitt detector click beyond four dimensions? will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-147902