A Consistent Histories approach to the Unruh effect

Abstract

Using the HPO approach to consistent histories we re-derive Unruh's result that an observer constantly accelerating through the Minkowski vacuum appears to be immersed in a thermal bath. We show that propositions about any symmetry of the system always form a consistent set and that the probabilities associated with such propositions are decided by their value in the initial state. We use this fact to postulate a condition on the decoherence functional in the HPO set-up. Finally we show that the Unruh effect arises from the fact that the initial density matrix corresponding to the inertial vacuum can be written as a thermal density matrix in the Fock basis associated with the accelerating observer.