Spacetime diamonds

Abstract

We show that the particle-number distribution of diamond modes, modes that are localized in a finite space-time region, are thermal for the Minkowski vacuum state of a massless scalar field, an analogue to the Unruh effect. The temperature of the diamond is inversely proportional to its size. An inertial observer can detect this thermal radiation by coupling to the diamond modes using an appropriate energy-scaled detector. We further investigate the correlations between various diamonds and find that entanglement between adjacent diamonds dominates.