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arXiv:2002.02020 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Asymptotic states of accelerated qubits in nonzero background temperature

Augusto P.C.M. Lima, G. Alencar, Ricardo Renan Landim

Published Jun 11, 2020• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The study of the Unruh effect naturally raises the interest for a deeper understanding of the analogy between temperature and acceleration. A recurring question is whether an accelerated frame can be distinguished from an inertial thermal bath in pure thermodynamic experiments; such problem has been approached in the literature and a consensus is yet to be fully reached. In the present work, we use the open quantum system formalism to investigate the case where both acceleration and background temperature are present. We find the asymptotic state density and entanglement generation from the Markovian evolution of accelerated qubits interacting with a thermal state of the external scalar field. Our results suggest that there is a very small asymmetry on the effects of the Unruh and background temperatures. Addressing the nonzero background temperature case is of both theoretical and phenomenological interest, thus the authors hope to enrich the existing discussions on the topic.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.101.125008

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The study of the Unruh effect naturally raises the interest for a deeper understanding of the analogy between temperature and acceleration. A recurring question is whether an accelerated frame can be distinguished from an inertial thermal bath in pure thermodynamic experiments; such problem has been approached in the literature and a consensus is yet to be fully reached. In the present work, we use the open quantum system formalism to investigate the case where both acceleration and background temperature are present. We find the asymptotic state density and entanglement generation from the Markovian evolution of accelerated qubits interacting with a thermal state of the external scalar field. Our results suggest that there is a very small asymmetry on the effects of the Unruh and background temperatures. Addressing the nonzero background temperature case is of both theoretical and phenomenological interest, thus the authors hope to enrich the existing discussions on the topic.
Abstract We study, in the framework of open quantum systems, the entanglement dynamics for a quantum system composed of two uniformly accelerated Unruh-Dewitt detectors interacting with a bath of massive scalar fields in the Minkowski vacuum. We find that the entanglement evolution for the quantum system coupled with massive fields is always slower compared with that of the one coupled with massless fields, and this time-delay effect brought about by the field being massive can however be counteracted by a large enough acceleration, in contrast to the case of a static quantum system in a thermal bath, where this time delay is not affected by the temperature. Remarkably, the maximal concurrence of the quantum system generated during evolution may increase with acceleration for any inter-detector separation while that for static ones in a thermal bath decreases monotonically with temperature, and this can be considered as an anti-Unruh effect in terms of the entanglement generated.
We study, in the framework of open systems, the entanglement generation of two independent uniformly accelerated atoms in interaction with the vacuum fluctuations of massless scalar fields subjected to a reflecting plane boundary. We demonstrate that, with the presence of the boundary, the accelerated atoms exhibit distinct features from static ones in a thermal bath at the corresponding Unruh temperature in terms of the entanglement creation at the neighborhood of the initial time. In this sense, accelerated atoms in vacuum do not necessarily have to behave as if they were static in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature.
Uniform acceleration induces a thermal response to the Minkowski vacuum and can thereby modify quantum correlations. For measurement-induced nonlocality (MIN), a form of nonclassical correlation distinct from entanglement, previous field-mode analyses of bosonic fields found that it decreases with increasing acceleration and vanishes in the infinite-acceleration limit. This raises the question of whether the disappearance of MIN is a generic consequence of the Unruh effect or depends on the physical description of the accelerated quantum system. To address this question, we study two uniformly accelerating Unruh-DeWitt detectors interacting with a massless scalar field. We find that the response of MIN to the Unruh temperature depends sensitively on the initial detector state: it can decrease monotonically, vanish at an intermediate temperature and subsequently recover, or increase monotonically. Moreover, for a broad class of initial states, MIN approaches a nonzero value in the high-temperature limit. These results show that the suppression of MIN under strong acceleration is not universal. Instead, Unruh-induced detector dynamics gives rise to a state-dependent response in which measurement-induced nonlocality can be suppressed, restored, or enhanced.
We investigate the transition rates of uniformly accelerated two-level single and entangled atomic systems in empty space as well as inside a cavity. We take into account the interaction between the systems and a massless scalar field from the viewpoint of an instantaneously inertial observer and a coaccelerated observer, respectively. The upward transition occurs only due to the acceleration of the atom. For the two-atom system, we consider that the system is initially prepared in a generic pure entangled state. In the presence of a cavity, we observe that for both the single and the two-atom cases, the upward and downward transitions are occurred due to the acceleration of the atomic systems. The transition rate manifests subtle features depending upon the cavity and system parameters, as well as the initial entanglement. It is shown that no transition occurs for a maximally entangled superradiant initial state, signifying that such entanglement in the accelerated two-atom system can be preserved for quantum information processing applications. Our analysis comprehensively validates the equivalence between the effect of uniform acceleration for an inertial observer and the effect of a thermal bath for a coaccelerated observer, in free space as well as inside a cavity, if the temperature of the thermal bath is equal to the Unruh temperature.
The entanglement generated for a uniformly accelerated two-atom system in vacuum during its evolution may increase with acceleration, while that for a static one in a thermal bath always decreases monotonically with temperature. This phenomenon is named as the anti-Unruh effect in terms of the entanglement generated. In this paper, we study the effects of the interatomic interaction induced by the electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations on the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms. We show that the anti-Unruh phenomenon may exist or disappear depending critically on the configuration of the orientation of the atomic polarization and the directions of the uniform acceleration and the interatomic separation. This is in sharp contrast to the scalar-field case, in which the anti-Unruh phenomenon is always lost when the environment-induced interatomic interaction is considered.
A uniformly accelerated atom captures Pancharatnam-Berry phase in its quantum state and the phase factor depends on the vacuum fluctuation of the background quantum fields. We observe that the thermal nature of the fields further affects the induced phase. Interestingly the induced phase captures the exchange symmetry between the Unruh and real thermal baths. This observation further supports the claim that the Unruh thermal bath mimics a real thermal bath. Moreover for certain values of system parameters and at high temperature, the phase is enhanced compared to zero temperature situation. However the required temperature to observe the phase experimentally is so high that the detection of Unruh effect through this is not possible within the current technology.