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arXiv:2407.09218 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Second-order coherence as an indicator of quantum entanglement of Hawking radiation in moving-mirror models

Masanori Tomonaga, Yasusada Nambu

Published Nov 8, 2024• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The second-order coherence of light is a widely recognized physical quantity used to assess the quantum characteristics of light, and its properties have been extensively investigated in the field of quantum optics. Recently, it has been proposed that second-order coherence can be utilized as an indicator of quantum entanglement. In this study, we evaluated the second-order coherence in the context of the moving-mirror model, which serves as an analog model for Hawking radiation from a black hole. We discuss the relation between entanglement and the second-order coherence of Hawking radiation paying attention to the ``noise'' effect due to the thermality of Hawking radiation, which reduces the quantum correlation in the entanglement-harvesting protocol with two-qubit detectors.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.110.105004

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The second-order coherence of light is a widely recognized physical quantity used to assess the quantum characteristics of light, and its properties have been extensively investigated in the field of quantum optics. Recently, it has been proposed that second-order coherence can be utilized as an indicator of quantum entanglement. In this study, we evaluated the second-order coherence in the context of the moving-mirror model, which serves as an analog model for Hawking radiation from a black hole. We discuss the relation between entanglement and the second-order coherence of Hawking radiation paying attention to the ``noise'' effect due to the thermality of Hawking radiation, which reduces the quantum correlation in the entanglement-harvesting protocol with two-qubit detectors.
The Hawking effect is an exciting physical prediction lying at the intersection of the two most successful theories of the past century, namely, Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. In this dissertation, we put special emphasis on the quantum aspects of the Hawking process encoded in the entanglement shared by the emitted fluxes of created quanta. In particular, we employ sharp tools from quantum information theory to quantify the entanglement produced by the Hawking effect throughout the black hole evaporation process. Our framework allows us to extend previous calculations of entanglement to a larger set of cases, for instance, the situation where a black hole is immersed in a thermal bath, such as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and the quantum state of infalling radiation is, therefore, mixed. Motivated by recent intense experimental efforts, we extend our framework to the case of an optical white-black hole pair analog gravity system created by a strong electromagnetic pulse propagating in a non-linear dielectric medium. One of the main results presented in this dissertation is the development of a numerical code that recreates the Hawking process in such an optical analog. Utilizing this code together with our quantum information tools, we study how different input quantum states of light alter the amount of the entanglement produced in the Hawking pairs. We find that although ambient thermal noise and detector inefficiencies, unsurprisingly, tend to reduce quantum correlations in the Hawking process, when horizons are illuminated with single-mode squeezed states of light, the entanglement generated increases in a tunable manner. As a last application in optical analogs, we investigate the laser configuration in which two strong electromagnetic pulses propagate in a non-linear dielectric medium exchanging Hawking quanta, thus, stimulating each other. In such a setup, we observe that not only the number of Hawking quanta created is exponentially increased but also the entanglement shared between the mode of the electromagnetic field inside the laser cavity with the modes of the field outside the cavity grows with time. We conclude that these novel results open a promising window for the observability of the quantum origin of the Hawking effect in the lab.
We examine the condition necessary for extracting entanglement from a quantum field through the use of two local modes A and B (detector modes). We show that Simon's entanglement criterion for the bipartite Gaussian state can be reformulated in terms of commutators between the canonical operators of the detector mode B and the partner mode P of the detector mode A. Using the profile representation of detector modes, we identify that harvesting is prohibited under certain specific conditions. According to analyses based on moving mirror models, Hawking radiation originates from the Milne modes at past null infinity, that reflect off at the mirror and ultimately transform into real particle modes. Drawing parallels between the Unruh effect and Hawking radiation, our findings indicate an absence of quantum correlations between ``real particles" emitted as Hawking radiation.
Abstract The black hole information paradox arises from the tension between the thermal spectral properties of Hawking radiation and the unitarity principle in quantum mechanics. To explore the dynamical evolution characteristics of quantum fields in this context, we employ the standard quantization formalism for Dirac fields in Schwarzschild spacetime and investigate the coupling structure of particle and antiparticle modes within a framework that transcends the single-mode approximation. By calculating the states of externally observable subsystems, we systematically derive the evolution of concurrence and first-order coherence as functions of the Hawking temperature. Additionally, we assess the impact of varying initial parameters on these quantities. We further contrast the quantum entanglement differences between the observable exterior region and the black hole interior across diverse temperature regimes. These results provide valuable insights into the evolution of entanglement and coherence in curved spacetime.
In this work, we investigate the quantum entanglement properties of analog Hawking radiation produced by a moving mirror. Using two detector modes defined through window functions on a quantum field, we quantify the bipartite entanglement established between these modes. Our results reveal that the amount of entanglement accessible to the detectors increases when the mirror follows trajectories with non-monotonic, time-dependent acceleration, which are accompanied by the emission of negative energy flux. This indicates that the negative energy flux acts as a channel through which information can be returned. To substantiate this perspective, we examine how the recovery or reconstruction of the associated partner modes is related to the negative energy flux emitted by the mirror.
This Letter introduces a synergistic combination of analytical and numerical methods to study the Hawking effect in optical systems containing the analog of a white-black hole pair. Our analytical treatment, based on techniques from Gaussian quantum information, provides a simple and efficient model to describe all aspects of the out-state, including the entanglement between any bipartition. We complement the study with a numerical analysis and apply our tools to investigate the influence that ambient thermal noise and detector inefficiencies have on the out-state. We find that aspects of the Hawking effect that are of quantum origin, i.e., quantum entanglement, are extremely fragile to the influence of inefficiencies and noise. We propose a protocol to amplify and observe these quantum aspects, based on seeding the process with a single-mode squeezed input, opening the door to new possibilities for experimental verification of the Hawking effect.
Hawking radiation is the proposed thermal black-body radiation of quantum nature emitted from a black hole. One common way to give an account of Hawking radiation is to consider a detector that follows a static trajectory in the vicinity of a black hole and interacts with the quantum field of the radiation. In the present work, we study the Hawking radiation perceived by a detector that follows a quantum superposition of static trajectories in Schwarzschild spacetime, instead of a unique well-defined trajectory. We analyze the quantum state of the detector after the interaction with a massless real scalar field. We find that for certain trajectories and excitation levels, there are nonvanishing coherences in the final state of the detector. We then examine the dependence of these coherences on the trajectories followed by the detector and relate them to the distinguishability of the different possible states in which the field is left after the excitation of the detector. We interpret our results in terms of the spatial distribution and propagation of particles of the quantum field.