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Moving Mirrors and Thermodynamic Paradoxes

Adam D. Helfer
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Abstract

Quantum fields responding to "moving mirrors" have been predicted to give rise to thermodynamic paradoxes. I show that the assumption in such work that the mirror can be treated as an external field is invalid: the exotic energy-transfer effects necessary to the paradoxes are well below the scales at which the model is credible. For a first-quantized point-particle mirror, it appears that exotic energy-transfers are lost in the quantum uncertainty in the mirror's state. An accurate accounting of these energies will require a model which recognizes the mirror's finite reflectivity, and almost certainly a model which allows for the excitation of internal mirror modes, that is, a second-quantized model.

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Adam D. Helfer. 2000-01-01. Moving Mirrors and Thermodynamic Paradoxes. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.63.025016

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