2006/08/31 by Detlev Buchholz, Jan Schlemmer · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/24/7/f01
published as Class.Quant.Grav.24:F25-F31,2007 · 9 pages, no figures; minor changes in the exposition; version as to appear in CQG
arxiv created 2007/03/09 · arxiv updated 2010/11/02
A physically meaningful local concept of temperature is introduced in quantum field theory on curved spacetime and applied to the example of a massless field on de Sitter space. It turns out in this model that the equilibrium (Gibbs) states which can be prepared by a geodesic observer have in general a varying temperature distribution in the neighborhood of the geodesic and may not even allow for a consistent thermal interpretation close to the horizon. This result, which can be traced back to the Unruh effect, illustrates the failure of a global notion of temperature in curved spacetime and reveals the need for a local concept, as presented here.