prof. Michele Arzano

Horizon temperature without space-time

I will show how the characteristic thermal effects that observers experience in space-times possessing an event horizon, emerge already in a simple quantum system with affine symmetry living on the real line. The derivation I will present is essentially group theoretic in nature: a thermal state emerges naturally when comparing different representations of the group of affine transformations of the real line. The freedom in the choice of different notions of translation generators is the key to the Unruh effect on the real line which I will describe.