Polymer quantization predicts radiation in inertial frames

We investigate the response of an Unruh–DeWitt detector coupled to a polymer quantized massless scalar field in flat spacetime, using the propagator obtained by Hossain, Husain and Seahra. As this propagator violates Lorentz invariance, frames moving at different constant velocities are no longer equivalent. This means that it is possible in principle for even an observer moving at constant velocity to detect radiation. We show that such an observer indeed detects radiation. Remarkably, we show that the rate of this radiation does not decrease with the decrease in the characteristic length scale of polymer quantization. Thus the radiation cannot be suppressed by making the polymer length scale arbitrarily small. Our results should bring this theory within the ambit of low-energy experiments and place a lower limit on the characteristic polymer length scale. (paper)