Decay of accelerated protons and the existence of the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect.

Abstract

We investigate the weak decay of uniformly accelerated protons in the context of standard quantum field theory. Because the mean proper lifetime of a particle is a scalar, the same value for this observable must be obtained in the inertial and coaccelerated frames. We are only able to achieve this equality by considering the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect. This reflects the fact that the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect is mandatory for the consistency of quantum field theory.