DOES THE UNRUH EFFECT EXIST

It is shown that quantization on the Fulling modes presupposes that th e field vanishes on the spatial boundaries of the Rindler manifold. Fo r this reason, Rindler space is physically unrelated with Minkowski sp ace and the state of a Rindler observer cannot be described by the equ ilibrium density matrix with the Fulling-Unruh temperature. Therefore it is pointless to talk about an Unruh effect. The question of the beh avior of an accelerated detector in the physical formulation of the pr oblem remains open. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.