Signatures of the circular Unruh effect in electric and magnetic dipole transitions of multilevel atoms

Abstract: The circular Unruh effect is the excitation of a detector moving along a planar circular trajectory within an electromagnetic vacuum. We demonstrate that the magnetic dipole transitions in an atom, acting as the detector, dominate the electric dipole transitions. Our analysis of both free-space and cavity schemes shows that the sensitivity to the circular Unruh effect can be maximized by balancing the minimization of mode volume against the resulting decrease in mode density. Moreover, we propose a novel measurement scheme that uses the atom's multilevel structure to suppress the spontaneous emission rate, thereby enabling the experimental detection of the circular Unruh effect.