1995/10/25 by Jürgen Audretsch, Juergen Audretsch, Rainer Müller +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #atom-ph #gr-qc #hep-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/12/12/010
published as Class. Quant. Grav. 12 (1995) 2927 · 12 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure, to be published in Classical and Quantum Gravity
arxiv created 1995/10/25 · openalex publication_date 1995/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We study the spontaneous de-excitation and excitation of accelerated atoms on arbitrary stationary trajectories (`generalized Unruh effect'). We consider the effects of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction separately. We show that radiation reaction is generally not altered by stationary acceleration, whereas the contribution of vacuum fluctuations differs for all stationary accelerated trajectories from its inertial value. Spontaneous excitation from the ground state occurs for all accelerated stationary trajectories and is therefore the `normal case'. Furthermore, we show that the radiative energy shift (`Lamb shift') of a two-level atom is modified by acceleration for all stationary trajectories. Again only vacuum fluctuations give rise to the shift. Our results are illustrated for the special case of an atom in circular motion, which may be relevant experimentally.