부산대학교 도서관

We use elementary time-dependent perturbation theory, referred wholly to an inertial (laboratory) frame, to determine the probability that a semi-realistically modelled atom is promoted from the ground to an excited state, with the emission of a photon, when its nucleus is constrained to follow a classically prescribed trajectory including a finite interval of (arbitrary) acceleration between asymptotically uniform initial and final motions. In the formal limit where the proper acceleration a is constant and lasts forever, we verify the Unruh effect, namely that the atom then behaves as if it had been exposed to black-body radiation at temperature TU = a/2pckB. The point is that in virtue of its simplicity our formalism is reasonably adaptable, and its predictions free of objections like those often and rightly based on the unrealizable nature of strictly constant a considered directly rather than as a limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]