The Unruh effect in an Ion Trap: An Analogy

We propose an experiment in which the phonon excitation of ion(s) in a trap, with a trap frequency exponentially modulated at rate �, exhibits a thermal spectrum with an ”Unruh” temperature given by T = ~�. We discuss the similarities of this experiment to the usual Unruh effect for quantum fields and uniformly accelerated detectors. We demonstrate a new Unruh effect for detectors that respond to anti-normally ordered moments using the ion’s first blue sideband transition.