Balance wheel effect

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The balance effect of the quantum field theory states accelerated in vacuo observer sees himself a black body radiation exposure, the temperature of which is proportional to the acceleration. The effect postulated in 1976 by William Unruh at the University of British Columbia in Canada is extraordinarily small: for an acceleration that reaches relativistic speed over a distance of one micrometer , the radiation temperature would be just below the level of the cosmic microwave background . Unruh already pointed out in his original work that the effect is closely related to that of the Hawking radiation from black holes .

The Unruh effect does not lead to a new phenomenon, but merely provides alternative explanations to known phenomena. The basis is the change in the reference system between inertial coordinates (with a “cold” vacuum) on the one hand and the Rindler coordinates in which the accelerated observer rests on the other. The emission of bremsstrahlung from accelerated electrons can be interpreted as absorption of thermal photons from the vacuum field of an observer accelerated with the electron. Such an interpretation is possible, but not obvious, as long as the acceleration is not straight. Today's linear accelerators, including laser accelerators such as DRACO , are far too weak to produce measurable emissions.

According to its mathematical nature, the Unruh effect is not limited to electromagnetic interaction . If it is not an electron but a proton that is accelerated, and that is accelerated sufficiently quickly, it seems in Rindler's coordinates to see a vacuum populated by electrons and neutrinos , which it can absorb while converting into a neutron . The result that accelerated protons are not stable, of course, also results from the corresponding calculation in inertial coordinates.

The uniformly accelerated observer sees the temperature

Thereby means

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