2018/04/15 by Aditya Dhumuntarao, Dhumuntarao, Aditya, José T. Gálvez Ghersi +3
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1804.05382
openalex publication_date 2018/04/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the celebrated Unruh effect, we learn that a uniformly accelerating detector in a Minkowski vacuum spacetime registers a constant temperature. Building on prior work, we present a technique based on derivative couplings of the two-point Wightman function and the Hadamard renormalization procedure to define an instantaneous temperature for a massive scalar field, non-minimally coupled to gravity. We find the temperature contains local contributions from the acceleration of the detector, the curvature of spacetime, and the renormalized stress-energy tensor of the field. Our result, which can be considered as a generalized Stefan-Boltzmann law for curved spacetimes, agrees with the familiar expressions found in 4D Rindler, thermal Minkowski, and de Sitter.