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The Unruh effect in an Ion Trap: An Analogy

P. M. Alsing, J. P. Dowling, G. J. Milburn

quant-pharXiv:quant-ph/0411096

Abstract

We propose an experiment in which the phonon excitation of ion(s) in a trap, with a trap frequency exponentially modulated at rate κ, exhibits a thermal spectrum with an "Unruh" temperature given by T=hbar*kappa. We discuss the similarities of this experiment to the usual Unruh effect for quantum fields and uniformly accelerated detectors. We demonstrate a new Unruh effect for detectors that respond to anti-normally ordered moments using the ion's first blue sideband transition.

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