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arXiv:1406.5576 · Physical Review A

Dynamical behavior and geometric phase for a circularly accelerated two-level atom

Yao Jin, Jiawei Hu, Hongwei Yu

Published Jun 25, 2014• 20 citations
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Abstract

We study, in the framework of open quantum systems, the time evolution of a circularly accelerated two-level atom coupled in the multipolar scheme to a bath of fluctuating vacuum electromagnetic fields. We find that both the spontaneous transition rates and the geometric phase for a circularly accelerated atom do not exhibit a clear sign of thermal radiation characterized by the Planckian factor in contrast to the linear acceleration case. The spontaneous transition rates and effective temperature of the atom are examined in detail in the ultrarelativistic limit and are shown to be always larger than those in the linear acceleration case with the same proper acceleration. Unlike the effective temperature, the geometric phase is dependent on the initial atomic states. We show that when the polar angle in Bloch sphere, $\ensuremath{\theta}$, that characterizes the initial state of the atom equals $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$, the geometric phases acquired due to circular and linear acceleration are the same. However, for a generic state with an arbitrary $\ensuremath{\theta}$, the phase will be in general different, and then we demonstrate in the ultrarelativistic limit that the geometric phase acquired for the atom in circular motion is always larger than that in linear acceleration with same proper acceleration for $\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremath{\in}(0,\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{2})\ensuremath{\cup}(\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{2},\ensuremath{\pi})$.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.89.064101

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We study, in the framework of open quantum systems, the time evolution of a circularly accelerated two-level atom coupled in the multipolar scheme to a bath of fluctuating vacuum electromagnetic fields. We find that both the spontaneous transition rates and the geometric phase for a circularly accelerated atom do not exhibit a clear sign of thermal radiation characterized by the Planckian factor in contrast to the linear acceleration case. The spontaneous transition rates and effective temperature of the atom are examined in detail in the ultrarelativistic limit and are shown to be always larger than those in the linear acceleration case with the same proper acceleration. Unlike the effective temperature, the geometric phase is dependent on the initial atomic states. We show that when the polar angle in Bloch sphere, \ensuremathθ\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremathθ, that characterizes the initial state of the atom equals \ensuremathπ/2\ensuremath{\pi}/2\ensuremathπ/2, the geometric phases acquired due to circular and linear acceleration are the same. However, for a generic state with an arbitrary \ensuremathθ\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremathθ, the phase will be in general different, and then we demonstrate in the ultrarelativistic limit that the geometric phase acquired for the atom in circular motion is always larger than that in linear acceleration with same proper acceleration for \ensuremathθ\ensuremath∈(0,\ensuremathπ2)\ensuremath∪(\ensuremathπ2,\ensuremathπ)\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremath{\in}(0,\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{2})\ensuremath{\cup}(\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{2},\ensuremath{\pi})\ensuremathθ\ensuremath∈(0,2\ensuremathπ​)\ensuremath∪(2\ensuremathπ​,\ensuremathπ).
In open quantum systems, we study the geometric phases acquired for a two-level atom coupled to a bath of fluctuating vacuum massless scalar fields due to linear acceleration and circular motion without and with a boundary. In free space, as we amplify acceleration, the geometric phase acquired purely due to linear acceleration case firstly is smaller than the circular acceleration case in the ultrarelativistic limit for the initial atomic state $\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremath{\in}(0,\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{2})\ensuremath{\cup}(\frac{\ensuremath{\pi}}{2},\ensuremath{\pi})$, then equals to the circular acceleration case in a certain acceleration, and finally, is larger than the circular acceleration case. The spontaneous transition rates show a similar feature. This result is different from the case of a bath of fluctuating vacuum electromagnetic fields that has been studied. Considering the initial atomic state $\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremath{\in}(0,\ensuremath{\pi})$, we find that the geometric phase acquired purely due to linear acceleration always equals to the circular acceleration case for the certain acceleration. The feature implies that, in a certain condition, one can simulate the case of the uniformly accelerated two-level atom by studying the properties of the two-level atom in circular motion. Adding a reflecting boundary, we observe that a larger value of a geometric phase can be obtained compared to the absence of a boundary. Besides, the geometric phase fluctuates along zzz, and the maximum of geometric phase is closer to the boundary for a larger acceleration. We also find that geometric phases can be acquired purely due to the linear acceleration case and circular acceleration case with $\ensuremath{\theta}\ensuremath{\in}(0,\ensuremath{\pi})$ for a smaller zzz.
We investigate, in the framework of open quantum systems, the entanglement dynamics of two circularly accelerated two-level atoms with the same centripetal acceleration interacting with a bath of fluctuating electromagnetic fields in the Minkowski vacuum. We assume that the two atoms rotate synchronically with their separation perpendicular to the rotating plane and study the entanglement degradation, creation, revival, and enhancement by solving the Markovian master equation. In contrast to the scalar-field case, the entanglement dynamics is crucially dependent on the atomic polarizations in the sense that the polarization directions may affect the entanglement decay rate and may determine the occurrences of entanglement creation, revival, and enhancement. Compared with the uniformly accelerated case and the thermal case, the decay rate of entanglement for circularly accelerated atoms is larger, while the revival and enhancement rates are smaller.
We investigate the effect of the GUP on the Lamb shift of a two-level atom interacting with a real massless scalar quantum field, within the DDC formalism. For an atom undergoing inertial motion, uniform acceleration, and uniform circular motion, we analyze the separate contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction. We first derive the statistical functions of the field along the atom's trajectories for the three types of motion, expressing them as frequency integrals, and then employ them to calculate the vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction contributions to the radiative level shift. We show that the GUP-modified Lamb shift of the two-level atom arises entirely from vacuum fluctuations and acquires additional corrections proportional to βββ. We focus in particular on the acceleration-dependent GUP corrections. For a uniformly accelerated atom, the GUP corrections comprise thermal and nonthermal parts. At low accelerations, the thermal part exhibits nonmonotonic behavior, and is proportional to a4a^4a4 in the limit a/ω0→0a/ω_0 \to 0a/ω0​→0; the nonthermal part, by contrast, grows nonlinearly and monotonically, exceeding the thermal part by nearly two orders of magnitude at large accelerations. For an atom in uniform circular motion, the GUP corrections are purely nonthermal and also display a nonlinear, monotonic dependence on acceleration, increasing or decreasing steeply according to the sign of βββ. For the same βββ, the corrections are larger in uniform circular motion than in uniformly accelerated motion, since the former involves terms proportional to both a2a^2a2 and a3a^3a3, whereas the latter contains only a2a^2a2 terms.
We study the spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated two-level atom nonlinearly coupled to vacuum Dirac field fluctuations using the formalism proposed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc, and Cohen-Tannoudji and generalized by us to the present case in the current paper. We find that a cross term involving both vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction appears, which is absent in the linear coupling cases such as an atom interacting with vacuum scalar or electromagnetic fluctuations. Furthermore, the contribution of this term actually dominates over that of radiation reaction. Thus, the mean rate of change of the atomic energy can no longer be distinctively separated into only the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction as in the scalar and electromagnetic cases where the coupling is linear. Our result shows that a uniformly accelerated atom interacting with vacuum Dirac fluctuations would spontaneously excite and a unique feature in sharp contrast to the scalar and electromagnetic cases is the appearance of a term in the excitation rate, which is proportional to the quartic acceleration.
Abstract Transition rates of a uniformly accelerated atom coupled to a vacuum scalar field are identical with those of one being static in a thermal bath at a temperature proportional to the proper acceleration a, i.e., TU=a2πT_U=\frac{a}{2\pi }TU​=2πa​ T U = a 2 π . We discuss in this paper whether there exists such an equivalence in the electromagnetic field case if more atoms are involved. To be specific, we explore the similarities and distinctions between effects of a thermal bath and those of the uniformly accelerated motion by comparing the transition rates of a two-atom system initially in the symmetric or antisymmetric entangled state [ ∣ψ±⟩|\psi _{\pm }\rangle ∣ψ±​⟩ | ψ ± ⟩ ] in two cases, i.e., two static atoms in a thermal bath [the thermal case] and two atoms uniformly accelerated in vacuum [the acceleration case]. We discover that, for some particular orientations of atomic dipole moments, coherent radiation which happens in the acceleration case never occurs in the thermal case. The rates in the acceleration case with a low acceleration which means a low TUT_UTU​ T U can be smaller or larger and even equal to their counterparts in the thermal case; while the rates in the acceleration case with a high acceleration which means a high TUT_UTU​ T U are always much larger than their counterparts in the thermal case. Our results suggest that effects of a thermal bath and those of the uniformly accelerated motion on transition properties of a two-atom system in ∣ψ±⟩|\psi _{\pm }\rangle ∣ψ±​⟩ | ψ ± ⟩ are not necessarily distinctive, but can be equivalent if the acceleration is relatively low, depending on the value of the interatomic separation.