Moving mirrors and thermodynamic paradoxes

Quantum fields responding to “moving mirrors” have been predicted to give rise to thermodynamic paradoxes. I show here that the assumption in such work that the mirror can be treated as an external field is invalid, and the exotic energy-transfer effects necessary to the paradoxes are well below the scales at which the model is credible. A model with a first-quantized point-particle mirror is considered; for this it appears that exotic energy transfers are lost in the quantum uncertainty in the mirror’s state. Examining the physics giving rise to these limitations shows that an accurate accounting of these energies will require a model which recognizes the mirror’s finite reflectivity and almost certainly a model which allows for the excitation of internal mirror modes, that is, a second-quantized model.