The Unruh effect under the de Broglie-Bohm perspective

Abstract

We investigate the Minkowski ground state associated with a real massless scalar field as seen by an accelerated observer under the perspective of the de Broglie-Bohm quantum theory. We use the Schr\"odinger picture to obtain the wave functional associated with the Minkowski vacuum in Rindler coordinates, and we calculate the field trajectories through the Bohmian guidance equations. The Unruh temperature naturally emerges from the calculus of the average energy, but the Bohmian approach precisely distinguishes between its quantum and classical components, showing that they periodically interchange their roles as the dominant cause for the temperature effects, with abrupt jumps in the infrared regime. We also compute the power spectra, and we exhibit a very special Bohmian field configuration with remarkable physical properties.