Electrons as accelerated thermometers

The possibility of using accelerated electrons to exhibit the quantum field theoretic relation between acceleration and temperature is considered. In principle, the depolarization of electrons in a magnetic field could be used to give the temperature reading. The effect is examined for linearly accelerated electrons, but the result is that the relevant orders of magnitude are too small for real experiments in linear accelerators. For electrons in storage rings sufficiently large accelerations can be obtained, and the residual depolarization which has been found theoretically and experimentally is shown to be an effect closely related to the thermal effect of linearly accelerated electrons. (author)