The brane universe as an Unruh observer

Abstract

We make the observation that a brane universe accelerates through its bulk spacetime, and so may be interpreted as an Unruh observer. The bulk vacuum is perceived to be a thermal bath that heats matter fields on the brane. It is shown that, aside from being relevant in the early universe, an asymptotic temperature exists for the brane universe corresponding to late time thermal equilibrium with the bulk. In the simplest case two possible equilibrium points exist, one at the Gibbons-Hawking temperature for an asymptotic de Sitter universe embedded in an Anti-de Sitter bulk and another with a non-zero density on the brane universe. We calculate various limiting cases of Wightman functions in N-dimensional AdS spacetime and show explicitly that the Unruh effect only occurs for accelerations above the mass scale of the spacetime. The thermal excitations are found to be modified by both the curvature of the bulk and by its dimension. It is found that a scalar field can appear like a fermion in odd dimensions. We analyse the excitations in terms of vacuum fluctuations and back reactions and find that the Unruh effect stems solely from the vacuum fluctuations in even dimensions and from the back reactions in odd dimensions.