Abstract
In the Unruh effect an observer with constant acceleration perceives the quantum vacuum as thermal radiation. The Unruh effect has been believed to be a pure quantum phenomenon, but here we show theoretically how the effect arises from the correlation of noise, regardless of whether this noise is quantum or classical. We demonstrate this idea with a simple experiment on water waves where we see the first indications of a Planck spectrum in the correlation energy.
| Original language | English |
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| Article number | 022118 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Physical Review A |
| Volume | 98 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 13 Aug 2018 |
Funding
We thank Rachel Bruch and Mordehai Milgrom for stimulating discussions. Our work was supported by the AXA research fund and LABEX WIFI (Grant No. ANR-10-LABX-24) within the French Program Investments for the Future (Grant No. ANR-10- IDEX-0001-02 PSL), the European Research Council and the Israel Science Foundation, a research grant from Louis Rosenmayer and from James Nathan, and the Murray B. Koffler Professorial Chair. I.G. is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for support through an Azrieli Fellowship. U.L. and I.G. contributed equally to this work, U.L. to the theory and I.G. to the data analysis of the experiment.