Interaction of a wave with an accelerating object and the equivalence principle

Abstract

Abstract The paper presents a new view of the so-called accelerating matter effect. It was stated earlier that the effect is optical by its nature and its essence is the change in the frequency of a wave transmitted through a refractive sample which is moving with acceleration. But as follows from a simple consideration based on the equivalence principle, the opinion on the relation of the effect only with the phenomenon of refraction is unjustifiably narrow, and the change in frequency must appear during scattering by any object moving with acceleration. Such an object may be an elementary scatterer or any device which transmits a narrow band signal.