Spontaneous Emission by Rotating Objects: A Scattering Approach

We study the quantum electrodynamics vacuum in the presence of a body rotating along its axis of symmetry and show that the object spontaneously emits energy if it is lossy. The radiated power is expressed as a general trace formula solely in terms of the scattering matrix, making an explicit connection to the conjecture of Zel'dovich [JETP Lett. 14, 180 (1971)] on rotating objects. We further show that a rotating body drags along nearby objects while making them spin parallel to its own rotation axis.