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arXiv:2604.12629

Mutual information harvesting for circularly accelerated detectors

Mingkun Quan, Runhu Li, Zixu Zhao

quant-phSubmitted Apr 14, 2026• Announced Apr 15, 2026
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the mutual information harvesting of two circularly accelerated detectors that interact with the massless scalar fields near a reflecting boundary. We consider that the two detectors share a common rotational axis with the same acceleration and trajectory radius. As the interdetector separation increases, the mutual information may exhibit oscillatory behavior at large acceleration and small radius. For a fixed radius, a larger acceleration leads to a larger peak value of the mutual information. Near the boundary, the mutual information may oscillate and the maximum can be obtained. As the acceleration increases, the mutual information in a small interdetector separation first increases and then decreases. For an intermediate interdetector separation, the mutual information may oscillate with the increase of acceleration. For a not large interdetector separation, when we take large acceleration and small radius, as the energy gap increases, the mutual information first decreases, then oscillates, and finally goes to zero. The combination of large acceleration and small radius corresponds to the fast rotation, which significantly modifies the vacuum fluctuations of the field, leading to the oscillatory behavior. Furthermore, the oscillation intensifies near the boundary, which indicates that it is related to the coherent superposition of boundary reflections.

DOI
10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2026.117454
Comments
19pages,12figures,accepted by Nuclear Physics B

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A bstract We study the properties of the transition probability for a circularly accelerated detector that interacts with the massless scalar fields in the presence of a reflecting boundary. As the trajectory radius increases, the transition probability may exhibit some peaks under specific conditions, which can lead to the possibility of the identical result for different trajectory radius with the same acceleration and energy gap. These behaviors can be characterized by certain critical values. Furthermore, we analyze the entanglement harvesting phenomenon for two circularly accelerated detectors with a boundary. We consider that the two detectors are rotating around a common axis with the same acceleration, trajectory radius and angular velocity. When the detectors are close to the boundary, there may exist two peaks in entanglement harvesting. Interestingly, as trajectory radius increases, entanglement harvesting in some situations first decreases to zero, then remains zero, and finally increases to a stable value. Our results show that the features observed properties of the detectors are closely related to the vacuum fluctuations of the field and states of the detectors. Under appropriate conditions, circular motion can be used to simulate the results of uniform acceleration.
We study the properties of the transition probability and entanglement harvesting phenomenon for circularly accelerated detectors locally interacting with massless scalar fields. The dependence of the transition probability on the parameters associated with the circular motion is first analyzed in detail. By a cross-comparison with the situation of the uniformly accelerated motion, we obtain that the transition probability and the possible thermalization behavior for detectors rotating with an extremely large circular radius are analogous to that for uniformly accelerated detectors, but for a very small linear speed and a large acceleration, the effective temperature which characterizes the detectors' thermalization in a finite duration is much lower than that for uniformly accelerated detectors. We then focus on the phenomenon of entanglement harvesting in two special situations of circular trajectories, i.e., the coaxial rotation and the mutually perpendicular axial rotation by examining the concurrence as the entanglement measure in detail. We find that when two circularly accelerated detectors have equivalent acceleration and size of circular trajectory, the harvested entanglement rapidly decays with increasing acceleration or separation between two detectors. In contrast with the situation of uniform acceleration, the angular velocity would have significant impacts on entanglement harvesting. Especially for those detectors circularly moving in different directions, both the acceleration and trajectory radius play an important inhibiting role in entanglement harvesting. When two circularly accelerated detectors have different values of acceleration or angular velocity, we find that the entanglement can still be extracted by such detectors, even in the situation that one detector is at rest and the other is in a circular motion.
Abstract We explore correlations harvesting by two static detectors locally interacting with vacuum massless scalar fields in the presence of an infinite perfectly reflecting boundary. We study the phenomena of mutual information harvesting and entanglement harvesting for two detector-boundary alignments, i.e., parallel-to-boundary and orthogonal-to-boundary alignments. Our results show that the presence of the boundary generally inhibits mutual information harvesting relative to that in flat spacetime without any boundaries. In contrast, the boundary may play a doubled-edged role in entanglement harvesting, i.e., inhibiting entanglement harvesting in the near zone of the boundary while assisting it in the far zone of the boundary. Moreover, there exists an optimal detector energy gap difference between two nonidentical detectors that makes such detectors advantageous in correlations harvesting as long as the interdetector separation is large enough. The value of the optimal detector energy gap difference depends on both the interdetector separation and the detector-to-boundary distance. A comparison of the correlations harvesting in two different alignments shows that although correlations harvesting share qualitatively the same properties, they also display quantitative differences in that the detectors in orthogonal-to-boundary alignment always harvest comparatively more mutual information than the parallel-to-boundary ones, while they harvest comparatively more entanglement only near the boundary.
We study, in the framework of entanglement harvesting protocols, the entanglement harvesting of a pair of uniformly accelerated detectors locally interacting with vacuum massless scalar fields subjected to a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. We find that the presence of the boundary generally degrades the amount of the harvested entanglement when two detectors are very close to the boundary for all three acceleration scenarios of the detectors with respect to the boundary, i.e., parallel, anti-parallel and mutually perpendicular acceleration. However, when the distance between detectors and the boundary becomes comparable to the interaction duration parameter, the amount of harvested entanglement may approach a peak, which even goes beyond that without a boundary. Remarkably, the parameter space of the detectors' separation and the magnitude of acceleration that allows entanglement harvesting to occur is enlarged due to the presence of the boundary. In this sense, the boundary plays a double-edged role on entanglement harvesting, degrading in general the amount of entanglement while enlarging the harvesting-achievable parameter space. A comparison of three different acceleration scenarios shows that the phenomena of entanglement harvesting crucially depends on the magnitude of acceleration, the separation between two detectors and the detectors' distance from the boundary.
We explore whether acceleration assists entanglement harvesting for a pair of uniformly accelerated detectors in three different acceleration scenarios, i.e., parallel, antiparallel and mutually perpendicular acceleration, both in the sense of the entanglement harvested and harvesting-achievable separation between the two detectors. Within the framework of entanglement harvesting protocols and the Unruh-DeWitt model of detectors locally interacting with massless scalar fields via a Gaussian switching function with an interaction duration parameter, we find that, in the sense of the entanglement harvested, acceleration is a mixed blessing insofar as it increases the harvested entanglement for a large detector energy gap relative to the interaction duration parameter, whilst inhibiting the entanglement harvested for a small energy gap. Regarding the harvesting-achievable separation range between the detectors, we further find that for very small acceleration and large energy gap, both relative to the duration parameter, acceleration-assisted enhancement can happen in all three acceleration scenarios. This is in sharp contrast to what was argued previously: that the harvesting-achievable range can be enhanced only for antiparallel acceleration. However, for a not too small acceleration relative to the duration parameter and an energy gap larger than the acceleration, we find that only detectors in parallel acceleration possess a harvesting-achievable range larger than those at rest.
Abstract We study, in the framework of the entanglement harvesting protocol, the entanglement harvesting of both a pair of inertial and uniformly accelerated detectors locally interacting with vacuum massless scalar fields subjected to a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. We find that the presence of the boundary generally degrades the harvested entanglement when two detectors are very close to the boundary. However, when the distance between detectors and the boundary becomes comparable to the interaction duration parameter, the amount of the harvested entanglement approaches a peak, which even goes beyond that without a boundary. Remarkably, the parameter space of the detectors’ separation and the magnitude of acceleration that allows entanglement harvesting to occur is enlarged due to the presence of the boundary. In this sense, the boundary plays a double-edged role on entanglement harvesting, degrading in general the harvested entanglement while enlarging the entanglement harvesting-achievable parameter space. A comparison of three different acceleration scenarios of the detectors with respect to the boundary, i.e., parallel, anti-parallel and mutually perpendicular acceleration, shows that the phenomenon of entanglement harvesting crucially depends on the acceleration, the separation between two detectors and the detectors’ distance from the boundary.