Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: We study the Lamb shift of both freely falling and static two-level atoms in interaction with quantized conformally coupled massless scalar fields in the de Sitter-invariant vacuum. We find that the Lamb shifts of both freely falling and static atoms are in structural similarity to that of an inertial atom immersed in a thermal bath in a Minkowski spacetime. For the freely falling atom, the Lamb shift gets a correction as if it was immersed in a thermal bath at the Gibbons-Hawking temperature, thus revealing clearly the intrinsic thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime. For the static atom, the Lamb shift is affected by a combination of the effect of the intrinsic thermal nature of de Sitter spacetime and the Unruh effect associated with the inherent acceleration of the atom.
Authors: Wenting Zhou, Hongwei Yu
Institutions: Hunan Normal University, Ningbo University
Language: Catalan
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2257243189