Unruh-DeWitt detector in AdS2

Abstract

We find the response function and the transition rate for an Unruh-DeWitt detector interacting with a conformal scalar field in global two-dimensional anti--de Sitter (AdS) spacetime with different boundary conditions at its conformal infinities. We calculate the particle energy spectrum as seen by subcritical accelerated detectors and discuss how it depends on the choice of the boundary condition. We show that, despite this nontrivial dependence on the boundary conditions, the limit when the AdS length scale tends to zero is well defined and leads to the well-known results of $1+1$ Minkowski space. One can thus interpret the AdS energy scale as a natural regulator for the well-known infrared ambiguity of massless scalar fields in $1+1$ Minkowski spacetime.