Near-horizon conformal aspects of acceleration radiation detected by a two-level atom freely falling
Channel: Biblioteca Pós-graduação em Física UFMG
Date: 06/12/2021

Título: Near-horizon conformal aspects of acceleration radiation detected by a two-level atom freely falling into static or rotating black holes, and possible connections with Black Hole Thermodynamics

Palestrante: Carlos Ordonez (Universidade de Houston, EUA)

Resumo:

A two-level atom freely falling towards a Schwarzschild black hole was recently shown to detect radiation in the Boulware vacuum in an insightful paper by  Scully et al. The two-state atom acts as a dipole detector and its interaction with the field can be modeled using a quantum optics approach. The relative acceleration between the scalar field and the detector causes the atom to detect the radiation. I will describe in this talk how this acceleration radiation is driven by the near-horizon physics of the black hole. This insight reinforces the relevance of near-horizon conformal quantum mechanics for all the physics associated with the thermodynamic properties of the black hole. We additionally highlight the conformal aspects of the radiation that is given by a Planck distribution with the Hawking temperature. Our approach allows us to handle more general spacetime geometries and initial conditions than in the above reference, as well as the important case of Kerr black holes, confirming in all cases the results by Scully et al. My emphasis will be on the basic ideas and logic of the calculation, rather than on the mathematical details. A summary of our more recent work regarding the so-called HBAR entropy introduced in Scully's papers and a suggestive connection with Black Hole Thermodynamics will be presented as well.