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Accelerated Detectors and Temperature in (Anti) de Sitter Spaces

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Submitted 6 Jun 1997 · 5 references

Pith's verdict: Short, honest letter: the AdS Unruh temperature is a real extension and the case-A derivation holds; the stress-test's trajectory tension dissolves once you notice constant-ρ observers have imaginary a₅.

T0 · AI review

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arXiv IDgr-qc/9706018 (version 1)
Pith IDZO5OKYB3, Pith's permanent record of this paper and its review
CitationOrit Levin, S. Deser. "Accelerated Detectors and Temperature in (Anti) de Sitter Spaces." arXiv:gr-qc/9706018 (1997). https://pith.science/paper/ZO5OKYB3
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Referee report
The paper

The paper claims

A detector's temperature in de Sitter or anti-de Sitter space depends only on its acceleration in the flat five-dimensional space in which those curved spaces are embedded.

The reading

The paper asks what a uniformly accelerating particle detector measures as temperature when it moves through a universe with a cosmological constant, either positive (de Sitter) or negative (anti-de Sitter). The authors' answer is that the temperature is set by one number, the detector's acceleration in the flat five-dimensional embedding space, giving $2πT = (Λ/3 + a^2)^{1/2}$. For de Sitter this reproduces a result already in the literature; the new ground is anti-de Sitter, where the same formula is claimed to hold but with a floor: the temperature is real only above a critical four-acceleration, and below it the trajectory itself is spacelike, so no physical detector can travel it. The authors then back the kinematic argument with an explicit detector-field calculation, computing transition rates from Wightman functions for three different ways of defining a scalar field in anti-de Sitter, and recovering a Planckian spectrum. The stake is whether the Unruh picture, in which acceleration alone fixes a thermal response, survives the loss of a global time in anti-de Sitter.

What carries the argument

The load-bearing device is the embedding-space rewriting: both de Sitter and anti-de Sitter are represented as hyperplanes $η_{AB}z^Az^B = ∓R^2$ in a flat five-dimensional space with $R^2 = 3/|Λ|$, so that a curved-space trajectory becomes an ordinary trajectory in flat space. A detector held at constant $z^4 = Z$ traces a hyperbola $(z^1)^2 - (z^0)^2 = ±(R^2 - Z^2)$, the same shape as a uniformly accelerated detector in Minkowski space, and the flat-space Rindler result can be applied directly with the five-dimensional acceleration $a_5 = (Λ/3 + a^2)^{1/2}$ in place of the ordinary one. The second device is the Wightman function of a massless scalar field in anti-de Sitter, computed for three boundary conditions (transparent, and two reflective choices) inherited from the conformal map to the static Einstein universe, which converts the question into whether the detector's response integral produces a Planck factor.

Extended reading notes

Core claim

The central claim is that for a detector with constant four-acceleration $a$ in a space with cosmological constant $Λ$, the measured temperature is $2πT = (Λ/3 + a^2)^{1/2}$, and that this quantity is exactly the detector's acceleration $a_5$ in the flat five-dimensional embedding space of the curved geometry. In de Sitter, where the sign is positive, this recovers the known result of Narnhofer, Peter and Thirring; in anti-de Sitter, where $Λ$ is negative, the same expression is claimed to hold and to be well defined down to the critical value $a_5 = 0$. Below that critical acceleration the temperature would be imaginary, but the authors point out that the corresponding orbits are spacelike, so the imaginary case is never physically realized. The claim is then checked by an Unruh-type calculation: for the hyperbolic embedding trajectories the Wightman function reduces to a function of proper time of the form $X = a_5^2R^2[1-��cosh a_5(s-s') - iε]^{-1}$, and the resulting transition rate has the standard Planck denominator $[exp(2πΔE/a_5) - 1]^{-1}$. The authors also show that detectors sitting at constant spatial coordinate $ρ$ in anti-de Sitter, whose embedding orbits are circles rather than hyperbolas, get a vanishing transition rate, i.e. zero temperature, which they read as confirmation that the hyperbolic five-dimensional motion is what carries the thermal effect.

Load-bearing premise

For the two reflective boundary conditions in anti-de Sitter, the paper assumes without a quantitative bound that the extra oscillatory terms in the transition rate are always small next to the Planck term, which is what lets it claim a thermal spectrum for all three field definitions rather than only the transparent one.

Editorial extensions

If this is right

  • A detector's thermal response in a curved background is fixed by a single embedding-space acceleration, so the Unruh and de Sitter temperature formulas become two cases of one statement rather than separate results.
  • In anti-de Sitter there is a minimum four-acceleration below which no temperature is defined, and the reason is kinematic rather than dynamical: the required orbit is spacelike.
  • Detectors at constant spatial coordinate in anti-de Sitter, whose embedding orbits close into circles, see no thermal bath at all, which separates thermal from merely accelerated motion.
  • Because the leading Planck factor is the same for all three boundary conditions considered, the notion of temperature in anti-de Sitter is claimed not to depend on how the ambiguity in defining the field is resolved.
  • In the flat-space limit $R → ∞$ the extra terms in the reflective boundary-condition rates vanish, so the construction reduces to the standard Minkowski Unruh result.

Reading between the lines

Editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • If the temperature really depends only on the five-dimensional acceleration, then any two quite different motions with the same $a_5$ should be thermodynamically indistinguishable to the detector, which is a sharper statement than the paper needs and could be tested against other trajectories in these backgrounds.
  • The vanishing result for constant-$ρ$ detectors suggests a clean operational criterion: a trajectory is thermal precisely when its embedding orbit is hyperbolic, which would let one classify detector motions in other curved spaces without computing Wightman functions at all.
  • The anti-de Sitter critical acceleration $a_5 = 0$ may be connected to the known tension between anti-de Sitter's lack of global hyperbolicity and any global thermal notion, so a reader might expect the boundary-condition dependence to reappear at next order rather than disappear.
  • The claim that the extra non-Planckian terms are subdominant is stated rather than bounded, so a natural extension is to map out, as a function of detector energy splitting and $a_5R$, the region where those terms would be comparable to the Planck term.
Original abstract

We show, in complete accord with the usual Rindler picture, that detectors with constant acceleration $a$ in de Sitter (dS) and Anti de Sitter (AdS) spaces with cosmological constants $\Lambda$ measure temperatures $2\pi T=(\Lambda/3+a^{2})^{1/2}\equiv a_{5}$, the detector "5-acceleration" in the embedding flat 5-space. For dS, this recovers a known result; in AdS, where $\Lambda$ is negative, the temperature is well defined down to the critical value $a_{5}=0$, again in accord with the underlying kinematics. The existence of a thermal spectrum is also demonstrated for a variety of candidate wave functions in AdS backgrounds.

The compiled record

The paper's own sentences, arranged, kept beside the review and separate from it. Each label is drawn from a closed vocabulary; the number beside it is the probability the classifier gave that label. Numbers in the tables are the authors', checked by code. No sentence in this record was written by a model.

Compiled by classifier-1.13-20260917 via OpenRouter, question bank abstract-p1-20260923, 2026-09-23: 1 request, 3,137 input tokens, $0.0001 reported.

What the abstract itself states, as probabilities: claims first 0.03 · states limitation 0.24 · human participants 0.01 · controlled comparison 0.05 · randomized assignment 0.01 · states quantitative result 0.90 · compares with prior results 0.93 · mentions code or data availability 0.02.

The abstract, sentence by sentence

arXiv listing abstract v1. Results and the main claim are underlined; .

We show, in complete accord with the usual Rindler picture, that detectors with constant acceleration $a$ in de Sitter (dS) and Anti de Sitter (AdS) spaces with cosmological constants $\Lambda$ measure temperatures $2\pi T=(\Lambda/3+a^{2})^{1/2}\equiv a_{5}$, the detector "5-acceleration" in the embedding flat 5-space. For dS, this recovers a known result; in AdS, where $\Lambda$ is negative, the temperature is well defined down to the critical value $a_{5}=0$, again in accord with the underlying kinematics. The existence of a thermal spectrum is also demonstrated for a variety of candidate wave functions in AdS backgrounds.

background contribution method result interpretation main claim

What the classifier reports for each sentence. The number is the probability it gave the label.
#sentencerolethe authors' own workstates the main conclusionstrength
s0 We show, in complete accord with the usual Rindler picture, that detectors with constant acceleration $a$ in de Sitter (dS) and Anti de Sitter (AdS) spaces with cosmological constants $\Lambda$ measure temperatures $2\pi T=(\Lambda/3+a^{2})^{1/2}\equiv a_{5}$, the detector "5-acceleration" in the embedding flat 5-space. result 0.98 0.91 0.87 asserted 1.00
s1 For dS, this recovers a known result; in AdS, where $\Lambda$ is negative, the temperature is well defined down to the critical value $a_{5}=0$, again in accord with the underlying kinematics. result 0.88 0.72 0.14 asserted 1.00
s2 The existence of a thermal spectrum is also demonstrated for a variety of candidate wave functions in AdS backgrounds. result 0.85 0.90 0.07 asserted 1.00

What kind of paper the classifier reports this is: theoretical result 1.00 · evidence from proof or derivation 1.00.

What was examined, and what was not

sources read
  • arXiv listing abstract v1
not examined
  • full text
  • figures and tables
  • references and citing sentences
  • relations to other papers
levels run
  • P abstract
not run
  • S sections
  • T body sentences
  • C citations
  • R cross-paper relations

Every quoted sentence on this record is the authors'. Every label is from Pith's closed vocabulary, with the probability shown beside it. Every number in the measurements table is the authors', checked by code. Record as JSON

Figures
Figure 1. Penrose diagram of dS space. Solid lines represent z 4 = ±|Z|, broken lines the two possible sets with z 1 = Z. Dotted lines give the null horizons of the trajectory sets to which they are the asymptotes

Figures reproduced from arXiv:gr-qc/9706018 by the authors.

References
How later papers used it

50 later papers cite it

Evidence: some. 50 of the citing papers share no author with it, and 7 of those carry a confident label from Pith's citation classifier.

Pith read 7 of the 77 citing sentences, choosing only those whose citation markers point at this paper alone, and wrote the paraphrases from them. The summary, the counts, the evidence level, the links and the quotes come from code; the summary counts the papers listed below. A later paper is listed under a label when Pith's citation classifier gives one of its sentences that label at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), Pith's reading finds that the citing paper itself did it, and a second check confirms the paraphrase against the sentence. This section lists uses only. It does not list criticism or disagreement, so their absence here says nothing about how the paper has been received. Papers that share an author with this one are listed apart, under "By the same authors". A quote is the citing authors' own sentence, shown when their paper's licence is CC BY, CC BY-SA or CC0. JSON

Compares with it 1 of 4 papers with this label
  • Connection with GEMS: For (A)dS, our result is exact and reproduces the the famous result by Deser and Levin [ref] for (anti) de-Sitter spacetimes considered as embedded sub-manifolds of a five dimensional flat spacetime (the so called GEMS approach).

    Effect of tidal curvature on dynamics of accelerated probes (2021) · Implications and Discussion · 0.92

How the literature uses it

44 arXiv papers cite this in 70 sentences

Each citing sentence is taken from the citing paper's LaTeX source and typed by Pith's classifier. A label appears at probability 0.8 or more (0.95 for support), a contest at 0.7 or more; the quoted words are the citing authors'. How each label was checked · JSON

Papers citing it · 51 sentences without a confident label

Contests it 1 paper
  • We will consider three boundary conditions on the timelike boundary of AdS, enumerated according to the value $ε$, as in [ref] : $ε=-1$ is Dirichlet, $ε=1$ is Neumann, and $ε=0$ is “transparent” (i.e. considering AdS embedded within an Einstein static universe [ref] ); we note that in [ref] the latter two boundary conditions were erroneously transposed.

    Unruh-DeWitt detectors and entanglement: the anti-de Sitter space · Global AdS modes · contest 0.79

Uses its method or tool 4 papers
  • Performing the global embedding of the SAdS spacetime into the higher dimensional Minkowski spacetime, a free-fall observer on the SAdS black hole could be identified with the accelerated observer in the higher dimensional Rindler spacetime [ref] , so that the Rindler observer could find the Unruh temperature as [ref] [equation] where $a$ is the proper acceleration of the observer in the higher dimensional Minkowski spacetime.

    Proper temperature of Schwarzschild AdS black hole revisited · Proper temperature from the GEMS · 0.97

  • It will be shown that this embedding is enough to derive the Hawking result using the Deser-Levin approach [ref] , instead of the full embedding of the curved space-time.

    A New Global Embedding Approach to Study Hawking and Unruh Effects · Introduction · 0.90

  • It will be shown that this embedding is enough to derive the Hawking result using the Deser-Levin approach [ref] , instead of the full embedding of the curved space-time.

    Quantum Tunneling in Black Holes · Discussions · 0.84

Compares with it 4 papers
  • ([ref]) and ([ref]) with the effective temperature for an accelerating observer in $dS_2$ and $AdS_2$, which is given by [ref] [equation] where $R$ denotes the scalar curvature in $dS_2$ and $AdS_2$.

    One-Loop Effective Action and Schwinger Effect in (Anti-) de Sitter Space · Effective Temperature for Schwinger Effect in $dS_2$ and $AdS_2$ · 0.99

  • In Sec. [ref], the proper temperature will be obtained in the two-dimensional SAdS black hole by using the GEMS [ref] in the self-contained manner in comparison with our result.

    Proper temperature of Schwarzschild AdS black hole revisited · Introduction · 0.97

  • Connection with GEMS: For (A)dS, our result is exact and reproduces the the famous result by Deser and Levin [ref] for (anti) de-Sitter spacetimes considered as embedded sub-manifolds of a five dimensional flat spacetime (the so called GEMS approach).

    Effect of tidal curvature on dynamics of accelerated probes · Implications and Discussion · 0.92

Cites it as background 8 papers

Discussion

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