Status of the Equivalence Principle for Uniform Acceleration Radiation

IQSE AMO QO Seminar Series

Tuesday, February 8 11:30 AM CST

ZOOM & IQSE seminar room (MPHY 578)

Lunch will be served for IQSE members at 11:00. The talk will start around 11:30

Speaker: Stephen A. Fulling

IQSE; Mathematics, Physics & Astronomy,Texas A&M University

Status of the Equivalence Principle for Uniform Acceleration Radiation

We all agree that (1) a stationary charge does not radiate, as seen by a stationary observer. Most experts now agree that (2) a uniformly accelerated charge does emit (classical) radiation to a stationary observer, and (3) the accelerated charge does not radiate from the point of view of a coaccelerated observer (one following another orbit of the same Rindler Killing vector). Most controversial is (4) a stationary charge radiates from the point of view of a uniformly accelerated observer. Many physicists pronounce (4) to be manifestly absurd. In defense of (4) one can argue that (a) it appears to be required by symmetry (a “qualitative equivalence principle”), and (b) it is a classical analog of Unruh-like radiation from an atom in free fall into a black hole (Scully et al., PNAS 2018).

On behalf of my student Luther Rinehart I will present an argument that (4) is correct if “radiation” is defined as a nonzero integrated outward flux of the field energy defined in the Rindler coordinate system (the “boost energy”). To establish this result and to gain insight into it, we consider a family of Rindler frames interpolating between the original Rindler frame and the inertial frame, and we calculate in the frame with acceleration g the radiated power from a charge with acceleration a. The result is proportional to (a-g)^2 , demonstrating: effect (3) when a=g; effect (2) (ordinary Larmor radiation) when g=0; effect (4) when a=0 . I will also present a devil’s-advocate argument that in fact there is no real radiation in case (4), because of time-reversal invariance. For the moment, you get to choose.

ZOOM information:

Meeting ID: 996 9666 2195
Passcode: 757350
162.255.37.11 (US West) 162.255.36.11 (US East)
Join by Skype for Business: https://tamu.zoom.us/skype/99696662195