Is acceleration radiation isotropic?

Abstract

The authors critically examine recent papers by Hinton, Davies and Pfautsch (1983) and Israel and Nester (1983) which claim that the radiation seen by a uniformly accelerating observer in Minkowski space will be anisotropic. They show that the results obtained by Hinton et al. are consistent with isotropy while the detector considered by Israel and Nester is unphysical. They derive an uncertainty principle limiting the accuracy with which one can measure the direction of travel of a Rindler particle of definite local frequency. In the WKB region where this uncertainty is negligible they correct a calculation of Unruh (1976) to show that the observed radiation is isotropic.