KMS, ETC.

Abstract

A general form of the "Wick rotation", starting from imaginary-time Green functions of quantum-mechanical systems in thermal equilibrium at positive temperature, is established. Extending work of H. Araki, the rôle of the KMS condition and of an associated anti-unitary symmetry operation, the "modular conjugation", in constructing analytic continuations of Green functions from real- to imaginary times, and back, is clarified. The relationship between the KMS condition for the vacuum with respect to Lorentz boosts, on one hand, and the spin-statistics connection and the PCT theorem, on the other hand, in local, relativistic quantum field theory is recalled. General results on the reconstruction of local quantum theories in various non-trivial gravitational backgrounds from "Euclidian amplitudes" are presented. In particular, a general form of the KMS condition is proposed and applied, e.g., to the Unruh- and the Hawking effects.