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arXiv:2312.13343 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Closed-form expressions for smeared bidistributions of a massless scalar field: Nonperturbative and asymptotic results in relativistic quantum information

Tales Rick Perche

Published Jul 18, 2024• 7 citations
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Abstract

Using spacetime Gaussian test functions, we find closed-form expressions for the smeared Wightman function, Feynman propagator, retarded and advanced Green's functions, causal propagator, and symmetric propagator of a massless scalar field in the vacuum of Minkowski spacetime. We apply our results to localized quantum systems that interact with a quantum field in Gaussian spacetime regions and study different relativistic quantum information protocols. In the protocol of entanglement harvesting, we find a closed-form expression for the entanglement that can be acquired by probes that interact in Gaussian spacetime regions and obtain asymptotic results for the protocol. We also revisit the case of two gapless detectors and show that the detectors can become entangled if there is two-way signalling between their interaction regions, providing closed-form expressions for the detectors' final state.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.110.025013

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Using spacetime Gaussian test functions, we find closed-form expressions for the smeared Wightman function, Feynman propagator, retarded and advanced Green's functions, causal propagator, and symmetric propagator of a massless scalar field in the vacuum of Minkowski spacetime. We apply our results to localized quantum systems that interact with a quantum field in Gaussian spacetime regions and study different relativistic quantum information protocols. In the protocol of entanglement harvesting, we find a closed-form expression for the entanglement that can be acquired by probes that interact in Gaussian spacetime regions and obtain asymptotic results for the protocol. We also revisit the case of two gapless detectors and show that the detectors can become entangled if there is two-way signalling between their interaction regions, providing closed-form expressions for the detectors' final state.
We present a new technique for computing entanglement harvesting with Unruh-DeWitt particle detectors. The method is particularly useful in cases where analytic solutions are rare and the Wightman function is known only via its mode expansion for which numerical integration can become very expensive. By exploiting the conjugate symmetry of the Wightman function, we may split the integral into parts dependent on the commutator and anticommutator of the field. In cases where the commutator vanishes, such as spacelike separation, or timelike separation if the strong Huygens principle holds, we then show that the entangling term of the bipartite density matrix can be expressed in terms of the much simpler mutual information term. For the vacuum state, this can be translated into a simple Fourier transform, and thus a single sum over modes, simplifying the procurement of closed expressions. We demonstrate this for Minkowski space, finding an analytical solution where none was previously known.
We study the protocol of entanglement harvesting when two local probes couple to the vacuum of a real scalar quantum field with arbitrary temporal profiles. We use a Hermite expansion to efficiently compute smeared field propagators in closed-form, recasting the negativity between the probes as a matrix product. We then optimize the protocol under different signalling conditions, enhancing entanglement harvesting by several orders of magnitude. This optimization would take current experimental proposals beyond the regime of second order perturbation theory.
We revisit the entanglement harvesting protocol when two detectors are in causal contact. We study the role of field-mediated communication in generating entanglement between the two detectors interacting with a quantum field. We provide a quantitative estimator of the relative contribution of communication versus genuine entanglement harvesting. For massless scalar fields in flat spacetime, we show that when two detectors can communicate via the field, the detectors do not really harvest entanglement from the field, and instead they get entangled only via the field-mediated communication channel. In other words, in these scenarios the entanglement harvesting protocol is truly ``harvesting entanglement'' from the field only when the detectors are not able to communicate. In contrast, for massive scalar fields both communication and genuine harvesting contribute equally to the bipartite entanglement when the detectors are causally connected. These results emphasize the importance of taking into account the causal relationships between two parties involved in this relativistic quantum information protocol before we can declare that it is truly entanglement harvesting.
In this work we first collect and generalize several existing nonperturbative models for the interaction between a single two-level qubit detector and a relativistic quantum scalar field in arbitrary curved spacetimes, where the time evolution is given by simple-generated unitaries, i.e., those generated by Schmidt rank-1 interaction Hamiltonians. We then extend the relativistic quantum channel associated to these nonperturbative models to include a very large class of Gaussian states of the quantum field, that includes an arbitrary combination of coherent and squeezing operations (i.e., Gaussian operations) on the field. We show that all physical results involving the nonvacuum Gaussian states can be rephrased in terms of interaction with the vacuum state but with Gaussian operators applied to the field operators via the adjoint channel, effectively giving a ``Fourier transformed'' interpretation of the Gaussian operations in terms of the causal propagators in spacetime. Furthermore, we show that in these nonperturbative models it is possible to perform exact computation of the R\'enyi entropy and hence, via the replica trick, the von Neumann entropy for the field state after the interaction with the detector, without making any assumptions about the purity of the joint initial states of the detector and the field. This gives us a three-parameter family of ``generalized cat states'' of the field whose entropies are finite and exactly computable.
We find the shape of the modes containing most of the entanglement between two disjoint spherical regions in the vacuum of a free massless real scalar field in 1+3 Minkowski spacetime. Using the Klco-Beck-Savage method we approximate the field and momentum profile of the vacuum most entangled modes (MEMs) between two spheres. We define a non-perturbative mode-swap entanglement harvesting protocol where two spacelike separated probes extract the maximal amount of entanglement between two regions. Our results are a first step in the direction of understanding the local entanglement structure of quantum fields, pinpointing the exact degrees of freedom that encode accessible quantum correlations in QFT.
We study entanglement harvesting for matter systems such as atoms, ions or molecules whose center of mass degrees of freedom are quantum delocalized and which couple to a relativistic quantum field. We employ a generalized Unruh-deWitt detector model for the light-matter interaction, and we investigate how the coherent spreading of the quantum center of mass wave function of two delocalized detector systems impacts their ability to become entangled with one another, via their respective interaction with a quantum field. For very massive detectors with initially highly localized centers of mass, we recover the results of entanglement harvesting for pointlike Unruh-deWitt detectors with classical center of mass degrees of freedom. We find that entanglement harvesting is Gaussian suppressed in the initial center of mass delocalization of the detectors. We further find that spatial smearing profiles, which are commonly employed to model the finite size of atoms due to their atomic orbitals, are not suited to model center of mass delocalization. Finally, for coherently delocalized detectors, we compare entanglement harvesting in the vacuum to entanglement harvesting in media. We find that entanglement harvesting is significantly suppressed in media in which the wave propagation speed is much smaller than the vacuum speed of light.