Unruh effect analogue in coupled harmonic oscillator systems

The goal of this project is to demonstrate that the difficulty of detecting Unruh radiation in Minkowski spacetime can be overcome by using a mathematically analogous system to model it. In this way, we are able to measure the effect in a different setting while still accounting for the system’s most basic features. We show that the necessary system can be found by considering a pair of coupled optical cavities. We outline how detection of radiation is to be performed in both systems, and how the two processes are related to each other.

Project write-up: PDF