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Simplified derivation of the Hawking-Unruh temperature for an accelerated observer in vacuum

Paul M. Alsing, Peter W. Milonni

quant-pharXiv:quant-ph/0401170

Abstract

A detector undergoing uniform acceleration a in a vacuum field responds just as though it were immersed in thermal radiation of temperature T= a/2π k c. A simple, intuitive derivation of this result is given for the case of a scalar field in one spatial dimension. The approach is then extended to treat the case where the field seen by the accelerated observer is a spin-1/2 Dirac field.

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