Relativistic quantum field inertia and vacuum field noise spectra

Abstract

The main theme of this survey is the equivalence statements for quantum scalar field vacuum states that have been recognized over the last couple of decades as a powerful line of reasoning when discussing the highly academic thermal-like Hawking effect and Unruh effect. An important ingredient in this framework is the concept of vacuum field noise spectrum by which one can obtain information about the curvature invariants of classical worldlines (relativistic classical trajectories). It is argued, in the spirit of the free fall type universality, that the preferred quantum field vacua with respect to accelerated worldlines should be chosen in the class of all those possessing stationary spectra for their quantum fluctuations. For scalar quantum field vacua there are six stationary cases as shown by Letaw some time ago, these are reviewed here. However, the non-stationary vacuum noises are not out of reach and can be processed by a few mathematical methods that are mentioned as well. Since the information about the kinematical curvature invariants of the worldlines is of radiometric origin, hints are given on a more useful application of such an academic formalism to radiation and beam radiometric standards at high energy accelerators and in astrophysics. The survey ends up with a quick look to related axiomatic quantum field topics and a few other recent works