Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Horizon brightened acceleration radiation entropy in causal diamond geometry: A near-horizon perspective

Nada Eissa, Carlos R. Ordóñez, and Gustavo Valdivia-Mera

Phys. Rev. D 112, 085030 – Published 30 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/frpr-pjmk

Abstract

In this article, we extend the horizon brightened acceleration radiation (HBAR) framework, originally introduced by Marlan Scully et al. in [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 115, pp. 8131 (2018)], to the causal diamond (CD) spacetime. We study a cloud of two-level atoms, injected at random times in the asymptotic past of the CD, freely falling toward its causal horizon and emitting scalar radiation via a weak dipole coupling to a quantum field. In the near-horizon region, an emergent conformal symmetry—captured by conformal quantum mechanics (CQM)—governs the field dynamics and allows analytic control of the emission process. We find that the radiation spectrum is thermal, with temperature TD=1/(πα), and that the associated von Neumann entropy flux reproduces the entropy production of the radiation field. These results demonstrate that the causal horizons of the CD spacetime effectively act as a topological thermal reservoir, with thermal properties arising entirely from the global causal structure rather than from underlying microscopic degrees of freedom, highlighting that the validity of the HBAR framework is fundamentally tied to the existence of causal horizons, independent of the presence of a black hole.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (32)

  1. M. O. Scully, S. Fulling, D. M. Lee, D. N. Page, W. P. Schleich, and A. A. Svidzinsky, Quantum optics approach to radiation from atoms falling into a black hole, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 115, 8131 (2018).
  2. D. G. Boulware, Quantum field theory in Schwarzschild and Rindler spaces, Phys. Rev. D 11, 1404 (1975).
  3. M. O. Scully, V. V. Kocharovsky, A. Belyanin, E. Fry, and F. Capasso, Enhancing acceleration radiation from ground-state atoms via cavity quantum electrodynamics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 243004 (2003).
  4. S. W. Hawking, Black hole explosions?, Nature (London) 248, 30 (1974).
  5. S. W. Hawking, Particle creation by black holes, Commun. Math. Phys. 43, 199 (1975).
  6. M. Scully and W. Lamb, Jr., Quantum theory of an optical maser, Phys. Rev. Lett. 16, 853 (1966).
  7. J. D. Bekenstein, Black holes and the second law, in Jacob Bekenstein: The Conservative Revolutionary (World Scientific, Singapore, 2020), pp. 303–306.
  8. J. D. Bekenstein, Black holes and entropy, Phys. Rev. D 7, 2333 (1973).
  9. H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, and C. Ordóñez, Near-horizon aspects of acceleration radiation by free fall of an atom into a black hole, Phys. Rev. D 102, 085010 (2020).
  10. H. E. Camblong and C. R. Ordónez, Black hole thermodynamics from near-horizon conformal quantum mechanics, Phys. Rev. D 71, 104029 (2005).
  11. A. Azizi, H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, C. Ordóñez, and M. Scully, Acceleration radiation of an atom freely falling into a Kerr black hole and near-horizon conformal quantum mechanics, Phys. Rev. D 104, 065006 (2021).
  12. A. Azizi, H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, C. Ordóñez, and M. Scully, Quantum optics meets black hole thermodynamics via conformal quantum mechanics. I. Master equation for acceleration radiation, Phys. Rev. D 104, 084086 (2021).
  13. A. Azizi, H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, C. Ordóñez, and M. Scully, Quantum optics meets black hole thermodynamics via conformal quantum mechanics: II. Thermodynamics of acceleration radiation, Phys. Rev. D 104, 084085 (2021).
  14. S. Sen, R. Mandal, and S. Gangopadhyay, Equivalence principle and hbar entropy of an atom falling into a quantum corrected black hole, Phys. Rev. D 105, 085007 (2022).
  15. A. Jana, S. Sen, and S. Gangopadhyay, Atom falling into a quantum corrected charged black hole and HBAR entropy, Phys. Rev. D 110, 026029 (2024).
  16. A. Jana, S. Sen, and S. Gangopadhyay, Inverse logarithmic correction in the horizon brightened acceleration radiation entropy of an atom falling into a renormalization group improved charged black hole, Phys. Rev. D 111, 085017 (2025).
  17. K. Chakraborty and B. R. Majhi, Detector response along null geodesics in black hole spacetimes and in A Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker universe, Phys. Rev. D 100, 045004 (2019).
  18. A. Das, S. Sen, and S. Gangopadhyay, Horizon brightened accelerated radiation in the background of braneworld black holes, Phys. Rev. D 109, 064087 (2024).
  19. A. Das, A. Krishnan, S. Sen, and S. Gangopadhyay, Derivative coupling in horizon brightened acceleration radiation: A quantum optics approach, Phys. Rev. D 112, 065006 (2025).
  20. H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, P. Lopez-Duque, and C. Ordóñez, Entanglement degradation in causal diamonds, Phys. Rev. D 109, 105003 (2024).
  21. P. Di Francesco, P. Mathieu, and D. Sénéchal, Conformal Field Theory (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1997).
  22. T. Jacobson and G. Kang, Conformal invariance of black hole temperature, Classical Quantum Gravity 10, L201 (1993).
  23. P. Martinetti and C. Rovelli, Diamond’s temperature: Unruh effect for bounded trajectories and thermal time hypothesis, Classical Quantum Gravity 20, 4919 (2003).
  24. A. Chakraborty, H. Camblong, and C. Ordóñez, Thermal effect in a causal diamond: Open quantum systems approach, Phys. Rev. D 106, 045027 (2022).
  25. H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, P. Lopez-Duque, and C. Ordóñez, Conformal quantum mechanics of causal diamonds: Time evolution, thermality, and instability via path integral functionals, Phys. Rev. D 110, 124043(2024).
  26. A. Chakraborty, C. R. Ordóñez, and G. Valdivia-Mera, Path integral derivation of the thermofield double state in causal diamonds, Classical Quantum Gravity 42, 025015 (2024).
  27. D. Su and T. C. Ralph, Spacetime diamonds, Phys. Rev. D 93, 044023 (2016).
  28. J. Foo, S. Onoe, M. Zych and T. C. Ralph, Generating multi-partite entanglement from the quantum vacuum with a finite-lifetime mirror, New J. Phys. 22, 083075 (2020).
  29. J. Foo and M. Zych, Superpositions of thermalisations in relativistic quantum field theory, Quantum 9, 1629 (2025).
  30. V. de Alfaro, S. Fubini, and G. Furlan, Conformal invariance in quantum mechanics, Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. 34A, 569 (1976).
  31. H. Camblong, A. Chakraborty, P. Lopez Duque, and C. Ordóñez, Spectral properties of the symmetry generators of conformal quantum mechanics: A path-integral approach, J. Math. Phys. 64, 092302 (2023).
  32. M. Arzano, Conformal quantum mechanics of causal diamonds, J. High Energy Phys. 05 (2020) 072.

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation