Emergence of Unruh prethermalization for uniformly accelerating many-atom system

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05816v1
• Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2025 19:37:07 GMT
• Title: Emergence of Unruh prethermalization for uniformly accelerating many-atom system
• Authors: Saptarshi Saha, Chiranjeeb Singha, Pragna Das, Arpan Chatterjee,
• Abstract summary: A uniformly accelerated atom in an inertial vacuum generally thermalizes and reaches a Gibbs state.<n>Here, we show that the situation is entirely different for the many-atoms problem.<n>In such a regime, the dynamics show a Dicke superradiance-type radiation burst before reaching the prethermal state.
• Score: 2.494510087367045
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: A uniformly accelerated atom in an inertial vacuum generally thermalizes and reaches a Gibbs state. This phenomenon is commonly known as the Unruh effect. Here, we show that the situation is entirely different for the many-atoms problem. In the case of non-interacting accelerating atoms, we show that a regime exists where the entire system reaches a prethermal generalized Gibbs state before it thermalizes. The prethermal state is protected by emergent conserved quantities; hence, the system behaves like a nearly-integrable one, which shows a sharp distinction from the Unruh effect. We coin the term ``Unruh prethermalization" to characterize this phenomenon. The measure of entanglement is a good estimation of the lifetime of the prethermal state and is consistent with previous studies. Finally, we show that in such a regime, the dynamics show a Dicke superradiance-type radiation burst before reaching the prethermal state. In contrast, only a mono-exponential decay is observed for Unruh thermalization. In addition, to highlight the significance of our results, we compare them with existing experimental observations.

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