Response of an accelerated detector coupled to the stress energy tensor

Abstract

The authors consider the response of accelerated detectors which couple to the components of the stress-energy tensor of the field linearly and locally. They show that these detectors become excited if put on an accelerated trajectory and evaluate the rate of excitation for the simple case when the coupling is to the trace of T_ik. These results arise from the fact that detectors respond to the power spectrum of the two-point function (O mod T_ik(x)T_lm(y) mod O) rather than to (O mod T_ikmod O)_reg. The latter quantity vanishes in the accelerated frame but the former does not. The consequences of the result are discussed.