Thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and spontaneous excitation of atoms

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dc.creatorZhu, Zhiying
dc.creatorYu, Hongwei
dc.date2008-02-14
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T11:40:18Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T11:40:18Z
dc.descriptionWe consider, in de Sitter spacetime, both freely falling and static two-level atoms in interaction with a conformally coupled massless scalar field in the de Sitter-invariant vacuum, and separately calculate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the atom's spontaneous excitation rate. We find that spontaneous excitations occur even for the freely falling atom as if there is a thermal bath of radiation at the Gibbons-Hawking temperature and we thus recover, in a different physical context, the results of Gibbons and Hawking that reveals the thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime. Similarly, for the case of the static atom, our results show that the atom also perceives a thermal bath which now arises as a result of the intrinsic thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and the Unruh effect associated with the inherent acceleration of the atom.
dc.description11 pages
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2018
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0802.2018
dc.identifierJHEP0802:033,2008
dc.identifierdoi:10.1088/1126-6708/2008/02/033
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/200212
dc.subjectHigh Energy Physics - Theory
dc.subjectGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
dc.titleThermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and spontaneous excitation of atoms
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