Abstract:
In the 1970s, Fulling, Davies, and Unruh demonstrated that the vacuum state perceived by an inertial observer in Minkowski space appears as a thermal bath to a uniformly accelerated observer. We explore the transformation of the Wigner distribution of a real scalar field from an inertial to a Rindler frame, utilizing both Minkowski and Unruh modes. We present a general expression for the reduced Wigner distribution for a specific set of massless scalar field configurations, and validate it against known distributions within this set. This includes arbitrary Gaussian states of Unruh-Minkowski modes, the Minkowski vacuum state, the Rindler vacuum, and the thermal bath of Unruh particles. Additionally, we analyze several other distributions, such as a peaked frequency distribution, a slight deviation from the Minkowski vacuum, and a distribution with a fermionic component in the Rindler frame. The conclusions are discussed.
