Response of the Unruh-DeWitt detector in flat spacetime with a compact dimension

Abstract

In a flat spacetime with one spatial dimension compactified, inertial reference frames are not all equivalent, but there are the preferred ones. This paper investigates the nonequivalence of inertial frames and also that of uniformly accelerated frames in connection with the response of the Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a massless scalar field. The detector's transition rates of both excitation and de-excitation are studied in depth for three different cases: (i) the detector moving at an arbitrary constant velocity, (ii) moving with a constant acceleration in the compact direction, and (iii) moving with a constant acceleration in noncompact directions. The instantaneous transition rate in relation to the switching function is also taken into account.