The Quantum Radiation from Mirrors Moving Sideways

✍ Scribed by G. Barton

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 932 KB
• Volume: 245
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-4916
• DOI: 10.1006/aphy.1996.0013

✦ Synopsis

Radiation from moving mirrors, a pure quantum effect, is well understood for mirrors that advance or recede. Here the simplest complementary scenarios are explored, where the mirror is not displaced: half-spaces shifting parallel to their surface and spheres rotating around a diameter. Perfect mirrors do not then radiate at all; hence this preliminary study (for a scalar field) is confined to order (1&1Ân 2 ) 2 for media with a constant (nondispersive) refractive index nr1; and also to leading order in (mirror velocity#v)Âc. The (photon-pair) emission probabilities, the radiative reaction force, and the radiated power are determined for a halfspace with arbitrary v. For simple-harmonic v the single-photon spectrum and angular distribution are given explicitly. The drag exerted on a fixed half-space by a moving one vanishes for constant v, although no reason from any symmetry is apparent. If a0Âcr1, then a sphere of radius a oscillating harmonically at frequency 0 radiates power at the same rate per unit area of its surface as would a half-space with the same velocity; but if a0ÂcR1, the power is less by a factor (a0Âc) 6 , a measure of the difference between effectively infinite and finite-size mirrors. An appendix evaluates the finite-temperature reaction and drag forces at constant v. Remarkably, this drag on a fixed half-space is independent of its distance from the moving one.