Abstract We consider a two-atom system uniformly moving through a circular ring at an ultra-relativistic speed and weakly interacting with the common quantum fields. Two kinds of fields are introduced here: a massive free scalar field and electromagnetic (EM) vector fields. The vacuum fluctuations of the quantum fields give rise to the resonance Casimir–Polder interaction (RCPI) in the system. Using the quantum master equation formalism, we calculate the second-order energy shift of the entangled states of the system. We find two major aspects of RCPI in a circular trajectory. The first one is the presence of the centripetal acceleration, which gives rise to non-thermality in the system, and secondly, due to the interaction with the above fields, the energy shift for RCPI is retarded in comparison with the massless scalar field. The retardation effect can die out by decreasing the centripetal acceleration and increasing the Zeeman frequency of the atoms. We also show that this phenomenon can be observed via the polarization transfer technique. The coherence time for the polarization transfer is calculated, which is different for the different fields.
Abstract We consider a two-atom system uniformly moving through a circular ring at an ultra-relativistic speed and weakly interacting with the common quantum fields. Two kinds of fields are introduced here: a massive free scalar field and electromagnetic (EM) vector fields. The vacuum fluctuations of the quantum fields give rise to the resonance Casimir–Polder interaction (RCPI) in the system. Using the quantum master equation formalism, we calculate the second-order energy shift of the entangled states of the system. We find two major aspects of RCPI in a circular trajectory. The first one is the presence of the centripetal acceleration, which gives rise to non-thermality in the system, and secondly, due to the interaction with the above fields, the energy shift for RCPI is retarded in comparison with the massless scalar field. The retardation effect can die out by decreasing the centripetal acceleration and increasing the Zeeman frequency of the atoms. We also show that this phenomenon can be observed via the polarization transfer technique. The coherence time for the polarization transfer is calculated, which is different for the different fields.
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 study the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, one excited and the other in the ground state, prepared in a correlated (symmetric or antisymmetric) state and interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state. In this case (resonance interaction), the interatomic interaction is a second-order effect in the atom-field coupling. We separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the resonance energy shift of the system, and show that only radiation reaction contributes, while Unruh thermal fluctuations do not affect the resonance interaction. We also find that beyond a characteristic length scale related to the atomic acceleration, nonthermal effects in the radiation-reaction contribution change the distance dependence of the resonance interaction. Finally, we find that previously unidentified features appear, compared with the scalar field case, when the interaction with the electromagnetic field is considered, as a consequence of the peculiar nature of the vacuum quantum noise of the electromagnetic field in a relativistically accelerated background.
We study the resonant dipole–dipole interaction energy between two non-inertial identical atoms, one excited and the other in the ground state, prepared in a correlated Bell-type state, and interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field nearby a perfectly reflecting plate. We suppose the two atoms move with the same uniform acceleration, parallel to the plane boundary, and that their separation is constant during the motion. By separating the contributions of radiation reaction field and vacuum fluctuations to the resonance energy shift of the two-atom system, we show that Unruh thermal fluctuations do not affect the resonance interaction, which is exclusively related to the radiation reaction field. However, non-thermal effects of acceleration in the radiation-reaction contribution, beyond the Unruh acceleration–temperature equivalence, affect the resonance interaction energy. By considering specific geometric configurations of the two-atom system relative to the plate, we show that the presence of the mirror significantly modifies the resonance interaction energy between the two accelerated atoms. In particular, we find that new and different features appear with respect to the case of atoms in the free-space, related to the presence of the boundary and to the peculiar structure of the quantum electromagnetic field vacuum in the locally inertial frame. Our results suggest the possibility to exploit the resonance interaction between accelerated atoms as a probe for detecting the elusive effects of atomic acceleration on radiative processes.
We investigate the resonance interaction energy between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state, in the reference frame coaccelerating with the atoms. We assume that one atom is excited and the other is in the ground state and that they are prepared in their correlated symmetric or antisymmetric state. Using perturbation theory, we separate, at the second order in the atom-field coupling, the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and a radiation reaction field to the energy shift of the interacting system. We show that only the radiation reaction term contributes to the resonance interaction between the two atoms, while Unruh thermal fluctuations, related to the vacuum fluctuations contribution, do not affect the resonance interatomic interaction. We also show that the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated atoms, recently investigated in the comoving (locally inertial) frame, can be recovered in the coaccelerated frame, without the additional assumption of the Fulling-Davies-Unruh temperature for the quantum fields (as necessary for the Lamb shift, for example). This indicates, in the case considered, the equivalence between the coaccelerated frame and the locally inertial frame.
We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms with the same acceleration perpendicular to their separation. The two-atom system is treated as an open system coupled with fluctuating electromagnetic fields in the Minkowski vacuum, and in the Born--Markov approximation the master equation that describes the completely positive time evolution of the two-atom system is derived. In particular, we investigate the phenomena of entanglement degradation, generation, revival and enhancement. As opposed to the scalar-field case, the entanglement dynamics is crucially dependent on the polarization directions of the atoms. For the two-atom system with certain acceleration and separation, the polarization directions of the atoms may determine whether entanglement generation, revival or enhancement happens, while for entanglement degradation, they affect the decay rate of entanglement. A comparison between the entanglement evolution of accelerated atoms and that of static ones immersed in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature shows that they are the same only when the acceleration is extremely small.