Abstract
The inverse beta decay of accelerated protons has been analyzed both in the laboratory frame (where the proton is accelerated) and in the comoving frame (where the proton is at rest and interacts with the Fulling-Davies-Unruh thermal bath of electrons and neutrinos). The equality between the two rates has been exhibited as an evidence of the necessity of Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect for the consistency of Quantum Field Theory formalism. Recently, it has been argued that neutrino mixing can spoil such a result, potentially opening new scenarios in neutrino physics. In the present paper, we analyze in detail this problem and we find that, assuming flavor neutrinos to be fundamental and working within a certain approximation, the agreement can be restored.
Highlights
It was pointed out by Müller [1] that the decay properties of particles can be changed by acceleration
The decay of accelerated protons has been analyzed both in the laboratory frame and in the comoving frame
The equality between the two rates has been exhibited as an evidence of the necessity of Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect for the consistency of quantum field theory formalism
Summary
It was pointed out by Müller [1] that the decay properties of particles can be changed by acceleration. It was shown that usually forbidden processes such as the decay of the proton become kinematically possible under the influence of acceleration, leading to a finite lifetime for even supposedly stable particles Drawing inspiration from this idea, Matsas and Vanzella [2,3,4] analyzed the decay of uniformly accelerated protons in both the laboratory and comoving frames, showing that the two rates perfectly agree only when one considers Minkowski vacuum to appear as a thermal bath of neutrinos and electrons for the accelerated observer (comoving frame). [12] affirmed that the choice of flavor states in the above calculation would lead to an equality of the two decay rates, but in that case, the accelerated neutrino vacuum would not be thermal, contradicting the essential characteristic of the FDU effect. Throughout the paper, we use natural units ħ 1⁄4 c 1⁄4 1 and the Minkowski metric with the conventional timelike signature: ημν 1⁄4 diagðþ1; −1; −1; −1Þ: ð1Þ
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