Acceleration radiation and the Planck scale

A uniformly accelerating observer perceives the Minkowski vacuum state as a thermal bath of radiation. We point out that this field-theory effect can be derived, for any dimension higher than two, without actually invoking very high energy physics. This supports the view that this phenomenon is robust against Planck-scale physics and, therefore, should be compatible with any underlying microscopic theory.

Figure 1

A uniformly accelerating trajectory (bold line). The dotted lines represent the (Rindler) mode propagation from $t=-\infty$ and $\xi =-\infty$, its reflexion by the potential (around $\xi \sim 0$), until $t=+\infty$ and $\xi =-\infty$, as described by the accelerating observer.