Acceleration Radiation for Orbiting Electrons.∗

This paper presents an analysis of the radiation seen by an observer in circular acceleration, for a magnetic spin. This is applied to an electron in a storage ring, and the subtilty of the interaction of the spin with the spatial motion of the electron is explicated. This interaction is shown to be time dependent (in the radiating frame), which explains the strange results found for the electron’s residual polarisation in the literature. Finally, some brief comments about the radiation emitted by an accelerating detector are made where it is shown that the spectrum is correlated in that particles are emitted in pairs. A uniformly accelerated objects sees the vacuum fluctuations as a thermal bath [1]. For an acceleration which is constant in amplitude and direction, this temperature is given by