Ideal clocks - a convenient fiction

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Referee this paper: arXiv:1503.01025 by Krzysztof Lorek, Jorma Louko,

Andrzej Dragan

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Summary suggestion for the review of Ideal clocks - a convenient fiction

abstract : We show that no device built according to the rules of quantum field theory can measure proper time along its path. Highly accelerated quantum clocks experience the Unruh effect, which inevitably influences their time rate. This contradicts the concept of an ideal clock, whose rate should only depend on the instantaneous velocity.

The authors derive analytically from a simplest case of a uniform acceleration through the study of a decaying particle in a cavity that the time measured by a clock depends on its acceleration and even more for a general accelerated motion.

They conclude that "All known physical processes and consequently all devices must become sensitive to their accelerations at certain scales and therefore the rate of any physical clock must inevitably differ from the idealized formula" and suggest further (numerical) evaluations of the impact.