The Unruh Effect and the Equivalence Principle

Abstract

The Unruh effect attracts the attention of researchers because it opens up new possibilities in connection with the ongoing attempts to test Einstein's theory of gravity. A special place among these attempts is occupied by the study of the equivalence principle, since in a number of works on the study of the Unruh effect, doubts have been expressed about its validity. The article shows that there is no reason for this. For this purpose, an infinite homogeneous plane is considered as the source of a stationary gravitational field in the article. The article considers solutions of Einstein's gravitational equations for the infinite homogeneous plane problem. It is shown that along with static solutions corresponding to a stationary gravitational field, there are its non-stationary solutions. Explicit analytical expressions for nonstationary solutions are obtained. It is shown that the non-stationary solution in asymptotic turns into a stationary one. The presence of such a solution explains the birth of particles and removes doubts about the possibility of the existence of the Unruh effect in a static homogeneous gravitational field due to the birth of particles at the stage of establishing a stationary gravitational field of the plane. In addition, considerations are given about the source of the singular gravitational field for the problem of hypercomputation.