Thermal radiation of various gravitational backgrounds

We present a simple and general procedure for calculating the thermal radiation coming from any stationary metric. The physical picture is that the radiation arises as the quasi--classical tunneling of particles through a gravitational barrier. We show that our procedure can reproduce the results of Hawking and Unruh radiation. We also show that under certain kinds of coordinate transformations the temperature of the thermal radiation will change in the case of the Schwarzschild black holes. In addition we apply our procedure to a rotating/orbiting system and show that in this case there is no radiation, which has experimental implications for the polarization of particles in circular accelerators.Comment: 6 pages revtex, added references, publication version. To be published IJMP

Comments on anomaly versus WKB/tunneling methods for calculating Unruh radiation

In this Letter we make a critique of, and comparison between, the anomaly method and WKB/tunneling method for obtaining radiation from non-trivial spacetime backgrounds. We focus on Rindler spacetime (the spacetime of an accelerating observer) and the associated Unruh radiation since this is the prototype of the phenomena of radiation from a spacetime, and it is the simplest model for making clear subtle points in the tunneling and anomaly methods. Our analysis leads to the following conclusions: (i) neither the consistent and covariant anomaly methods gives the correct Unruh temperature for Rindler spacetime and in some cases (e.g. de Sitter spacetime) the consistent and covariant methods disagree with one another; (ii) the tunneling method can be applied in all cases, but it has a previously unnoticed temporal contribution which must be accounted for in order to obtain the correct temperature.Comment: 13 pages, 0 figures, revtex4, To be published PLB. Critic of detailed balance dropped and reference added which shows how detailed balance works if one correctly takes into account the temporal piece. Discussion added about temporal contribution giving P_abs=1 condition added showing why "complex integration" constant is not neede