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arXiv:0905.3301 · Physical Review A

Quantum discord between relatively accelerated observers

Animesh Datta

Published Nov 4, 2009• 169 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We calculate the quantum discord between two free modes of a scalar field, which start in a maximally entangled state and then undergo a relative constant acceleration. In a regime where there is no distillable entanglement due to the Unruh effect, we show that there is a finite amount of quantum discord, which is a measure of purely quantum correlations in a state over and above quantum entanglement. Even in the limit of infinite acceleration of the observer detecting one of the modes, we provide evidence for a nonzero amount of purely quantum correlations. We discuss our result in the context of secure quantum communications involving eavesdroppers in noninertial frames.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.80.052304

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We calculate the quantum discord between two free modes of a scalar field, which start in a maximally entangled state and then undergo a relative constant acceleration. In a regime where there is no distillable entanglement due to the Unruh effect, we show that there is a finite amount of quantum discord, which is a measure of purely quantum correlations in a state over and above quantum entanglement. Even in the limit of infinite acceleration of the observer detecting one of the modes, we provide evidence for a nonzero amount of purely quantum correlations. We discuss our result in the context of secure quantum communications involving eavesdroppers in noninertial frames.
Abstract Using the single-mode approximation we study the quantum correlations of a free Dirac field on the Werner state in the noninertial frame. We present analytical quantum discord D and its geometric measurement D G . We notice that the quantum discord still exists for the system ρ ARI even in the acceleration limit. We also calculate the entanglement of formation (EOF) and the geometric measure of entanglement ( E G ) to compare the behaviors of the entanglement with the quantum discord. The entanglement is nonzero for the fidelity of the Werner state with a Bell state F > 0.5, while the quantum discord is equal to zero only for F = 0.25. We also observe that the quantum discord is more robust to the change of acceleration than the entanglement, which is more sensitive to the acceleration.
We investigate the amount of entanglement and quantum discord extractable from a two-mode squeezed state as considered from the viewpoint of two observers, Alice (inertial) and Rob (accelerated). We find that using localized modes produces qualitatively different correlation properties for large accelerations than do Unruh modes. Specifically, the entanglement undergoes a sudden death as a function of acceleration, and the discord asymptotes to zero in the limit of infinite acceleration. We conclude that the previous Unruh mode analyses do not determine the acceleration-dependent entanglement and discord degradation of a given quantum state.
We revisit the ``field entanglement in noninertial frames'' scenario extensively studied in previous literature and demonstrate that the geometric discord, a proposed measure of generalized quantum correlations, decays to zero in the infinite acceleration limit. This is in contrast with previous research showing that the acceleration-induced degradation of quantum discord was not strong enough to extinguish discord in this limit. We argue that our finding has two opposing but noncontradicting implications. On the one hand, the usable quantum correlations in the large acceleration regime appear severely limited for any protocols making use of geometric discord as a figure of merit. On the other hand, our result indicates, in corroboration with other recent work, that the geometric discord is not a faithful measure of quantum correlations, especially in the case of continuous-variable systems, due to the existence of states which have finite quantum discord but are nevertheless infinitesimally close (in the Hilbert-Schmidt norm) to a zero-discord state.
A uniformly accelerated observer perceives the Minkowski vacuum as a thermal bath, so acceleration acts as a noise channel on correlations shared with an inertial partner. For a Dirac field in the standard treatment, the resulting map is a one-sided amplitude-damping channel, and entanglement and quantum discord survive at infinite acceleration. We introduce a symmetric Unruh-like map in which the vacuum and the one-particle state both exchange amplitude with the inaccessible Rindler region; for a Bell state it yields a bit-flip channel whose flip probability is the Fermi-Dirac occupation at the Unruh temperature. Using negativity, mutual information, and all six pairwise quantum discords, we find that the entanglement and discord between the inertial observer and the accessible mode vanish together at infinite acceleration, leaving only one bit of classical correlation. These results show that the fate of quantum correlations in noninertial frames depends on the structure of the Minkowski-Rindler map.
The entanglement between two modes of a free scalar field (or a free Dirac field) is investigated in noninertial frames under the condition that they are initially prepared in a Werner state. It is found that the entanglement degradation induced by the Unruh effect highly depends on the initial purity f and the type of fields. For a fixed acceleration r , the critical values of f for the states entangled or separable are obtained in both scalar and Dirac fields. Finally, we make a comparison between the entanglement and the quantum discord and show that quantum discord is more robust than entanglement in our models.
We investigate the redistribution of continuous-variable Gaussian quantum discord under the Unruh effect for both one and two uniformly accelerated observers. The discord shared between the inertial mode and the accessible accelerated mode, as well as that between the two accessible accelerated modes, decays monotonically with acceleration and vanishes in the limit a→∞a\to\inftya→∞, while the Unruh effect generates discord in all causally disconnected Rindler mode pairs. The initial quantum correlation is therefore redistributed across Rindler partitions rather than destroyed. We further characterize how the squeezing parameter sss and field frequency ωωω control the discord in different mode-pair classes. For causally connected pairs, sss and ωωω exert comparable, interchangeable effects; for cross-region pairs, the squeezing parameter dominates; and for intra-observer cross-region pairs, the field frequency is more influential. In the two-observer case, the AIIA_{II}AII​-BIIB_{II}BII​ pair exhibits non-monotonic behavior with a peak whose position shifts to larger aaa as ωωω increases, and both parameters contribute only weakly except near an optimal ωs\fracω{s}sω​ ratio.