Acceleration-Induced Effects in Stimulated Light-Matter Interactions

We show that, in addition to the Unruh effect, there exist two new phenomena that are due to acceleration in the quantum theory of the light-matter interaction. The first is the phenomenon of acceleration-induced transparency which arises since acceleration impacts not only the counter-rotating terms in the light-matter interaction (the cause of the conventional Unruh effect) but also the rotating wave terms. The second new phenomenon is that the Unruh effect can be stimulated, a phenomenon that arises since not only rotating-wave terms can be stimulated (as in conventional stimulated emission) but also counter-rotating terms. The new phenomena are potentially strong enough to be experimentally observable.