Thermal fluctuations of a quantized massive scalar field in a Rindler background - art. no. 124022

Thermal fluctuations for a massive scalar field in the Rindler wedge are ob tained by applying the point-splitting procedure to the zero-temperature Fe ynman propagator in a conical spacetime. Renormalization is implemented by removing the zero-temperature contribution. It is shown that for a field of nonvanishing mass the thermal fluctuations, when expressed in terms of the local temperature, do not have Minkowski form. As a by-product, Minkowski vacuum fluctuations seen by a uniformly accelerated observer are determined and confronted with the literature.