On the relation between Unruh and Sokolov-Ternov effects

Abstract:
We show that the Sokolov-Ternov effect -- the depolarization of particles in storage rings coming from synchrotron radiation due to spin flip transitions -- is physically equivalent to the Unruh effect for circular acceleration if one uses a spin 1/2 particle as the Unruh-DeWitt detector. It is shown that for the electron, with gyromagnetic number $g \approx 2$, the exponential contribution to the polarization, which usually characterizes the Unruh effect, is "hidden" in the standard Sokolov-Ternov effect making it hard to observe.