Quantum radiation by an Unruh-DeWitt detector in oscillatory motion

Quantum radiated power emitted by an Unruh-DeWitt (UD) detector in linear oscillatory motion in (3+1)D Minkowski space, with the internal harmonic oscillator minimally coupled to a massless scalar field, is obtained non-perturbatively by numerical method. The signal of the Unruh-like effect experienced by the detector is found to be pronounced in quantum radiation in the highly non-equilibrium regime with high averaged acceleration and short oscillatory cycle, and the signal would be greatly suppressed by quantum interference when the averaged proper acceleration is sufficiently low. An observer at a fixed angle would see periods of negative radiated power in each cycle of motion, while the averaged radiated power over a cycle is always positive as guaranteed by the quantum inequalities. Coherent high harmonic generation and down conversion are identified in the detector's quantum radiation. Due to the overwhelming largeness of the vacuum correlators of the free field, the asymptotic reduced state of the harmonics of the radiation field is approximately a direct product of the squeezed thermal states.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, partly based on [arXiv:1601.07006

Instantaneous spatially local projective measurements are consistent in a relativistic quantum field

Suppose the postulate of measurement in quantum mechanics can be extended to quantum field theory, then a local projective measurement at some moment on an object locally coupled with a relativistic quantum field will result in a projection or collapse of the wavefunctional of the combined system defined on the whole time-slice associated with the very moment of the measurement, if the relevant degrees of freedom have nonzero correlations. This implies that the wavefunctionals in the same Hamiltonian system but defined in different reference frames would collapse on different time-slices passing through the same local event where the measurement was done. Are these post-measurement states consistent with each other? We illustrate that the quantum states of the Raine-Sciama-Grove detector-field system started with the same initial Gaussian state defined on the same initial time-slice, then collapsed by the measurements on the pointlike detectors on different time-slices in different frames, will evolve to the same state of the combined system up to a coordinate transformation when compared on the same final time-slice. Such consistency is guaranteed by the spatial locality of interactions and the general covariance in a relativistic system, together with the spatial locality of measurements and the linearity of quantum dynamics in its quantum theory.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures; Appendix B on nonlinear theories added, typos fixe