Vacuum Cherenkov radiation at finite temperature

Abstract

In this paper we examine the thermal effects of the vacuum Cherenkov radiation in a Lorentz- and CPT-violating electrodynamics. We compute the thermal contribution to the Cherenkov radiation rate within the Thermofield Dynamics approach. Since the model under consideration possesses a consistent canonical quantization and also fulfills the physical constraints in order to this vacuum process to happen, it is a perfect candidate to implement the study at finite temperature. We evaluate in details the instantaneous rate of energy loss for a charge, and show that the radiation rate is significantly modified at very high temperatures. Intriguingly, we further observe that when the temperature goes to infinity the radiation rate goes to zero even if the process is kinematically allowed.