I Is Unruh Radiation from Quarks in Nucleons a Violation of Energy Conservation?

[Davephaelon]

Back in 2005 Shahar Hod submitted a paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0510089) proposing that Unruh radiation from quarks inside nucleons is of a magnitude comparable to the mass of a quark.

This concept has been discussed in previous threads https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/unruh-ly-radiation-inside-nucleons.93591/#post-784075 but no one seems to have asked if such radiation from nucleons would constitute a violation of energy conservation. After all, if quarks within nucleons are releasing such large amounts of radiation nucleons could not exist.

Since no one doubts the existence of Unruh radiation, how can this situation be reconciled?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Unruh radiation does not violate energy conservation.

 

[Davephaelon]

I think I understand why it doesn't violate energy conservation. I was looking at the Wikipedia article on the Unruh Effect, and it states that the "background appears to be warm from an accelerating reference frame". So the radiation isn't being given off by the particle, resulting in backreaction, but is only what the particle 'sees' in the background. However, assuming that background thermal effect isn't isotropic, wouldn't there be some net radiation pressure on the particle?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Unruh radiation still does not violate energy conservation.

 

[Demystifier]

Unruh effect does not involve a radiation. But Unruh effect has some similarities with Hawking effect, which does involve a radiation.

 

[Lord Crc]

Unruh effect does not involve a radiation. But Unruh effect has some similarities with Hawking effect, which does involve a radiation.

How would the accelerating observer experience the background heating up if not through radiation?

 

[Demystifier]

How would the accelerating observer experience the background heating up if not through radiation?

The Unruh effect manifests as clicks in the detector. Radiation has a direction (e.g. pointing vector in the electromagnetic case), which is absent in the Unruh effect.

Of course, once the detector increases its temperature, it stars to radiate. But this radiation is a secondary effect, this is not the Unruh effect.

 

[vanhees71]

Is there any clear experimental demonstration of the effect at all? I guess, it' is illusory to make the experiment in the way that you accelerate the detector in the vacuum, but shouldn't also accelerated particles show the Unruh radiation because you could do the transformation from the lab frame (which I consider an inertial frame) to the restframe of the particle, where the detector is accelerated. Now the detector must "click" in any frame.

Here the problem must be the background of more "mundane" effects like bremsstrahlung, which you cannot avoid since I guess you need a charged particle to do the experiment since to get uncharged particles acclerated is a challenge.

 

[Lord Crc]

The Unruh effect manifests as clicks in the detector. Radiation has a direction (e.g. pointing vector in the electromagnetic case), which is absent in the Unruh effect.

Ah ok, you're using some definition of radiation I'm not familiar with, hence my confusion.