Using Berry's phase to detect the Unruh effect at lower accelerations

2010/12/10 by Eduardo Martín-Martínez, E. Martin-Martinez, Ivette Fuentes +3 · 1 voice · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #gr-qc #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.107.131301

published as Physical Review Letters 107, 131301 (2011) · 5 pages (including appendices) 2 figures, revtex 4. I.F. previously published as Fuentes-Guridi and Fuentes-Schuller. Journal reference added

arxiv published 2010/12/10 · arxiv created 2011/09/19 · openalex publication_date 2011/09/19 · arxiv updated 2011/09/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

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 10⁹ times smaller than previous proposals sustained only for times of nanoseconds.

Citations

• Manipulating quantum entanglement with atoms and photons in a cavity
• Quantal phase factors accompanying adiabatic changes

Cited by

• Relativistic quantum information theory and quantum reference frames
• Universality and thermalization in the Unruh effect
• Quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium
• Quantum metrology and estimation of Unruh effect
• Unruh Effect without Thermality
• Vacuum Condensate, Geometric Phase, Unruh Effect, and Temperature Measurement
• Unruh effect under non-equilibrium conditions: oscillatory motion of an Unruh-DeWitt detector

Discussions

• Wikipedia links to this paper (submitted to arXiv on 28 February 2019, last revised 18 June 2021) that claims to have detected the effect directly with positrons. From the abstract: Our derived power [stackexchange, 3 points]

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