Significant circular Unruh effect at small acceleration

Abstract

We study the transition rates of an atom rotating in a circular orbit, which is coupled with fluctuating electromagnetic fields in vacuum. We find that when the rotational angular velocity exceeds the transition frequency of the atom, the excitation rate can reach the same order of magnitude as the emission rate, even with an extremely low centripetal acceleration resulting from a very small orbital radius. For experimentally accessible centripetal accelerations, the excitation rate of centripetally accelerated atoms can be $10^{272,878}$ times greater than that of linearly accelerated atoms with the same magnitude of acceleration. Our result suggests that the circular version of the Unruh effect can be significant even at very small centripetal accelerations, contrary to the common belief that a large Unruh effect requires large acceleration. This finding sheds new light on the experimental detection of the circular Unruh effect.