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Effective horizons for quantum communication in a Schwarzschild spacetime

Dominic Hosler, Carsten van de Bruck, Pieter Kok

Published Nov 7, 2011• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Communication between a free-falling observer and an observer hovering above the Schwarzschild horizon of a black hole suffers from Unruh-Hawking noise, which degrades communication channel capacities. Ignoring time dilation, which affects all channels equally, we show that for bosonic communication using single and dual rail encoding the classical channel capacity reaches a finite value and the quantum channel capacity falls off exponentially. The latter defines an effective horizon, beyond which quantum communication becomes exponentially resource inefficient. The characteristic length scale associated with this quantum horizon depends on the mass of the black hole and the frequency of the communication channel.

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Communication between a free-falling observer and an observer hovering above the Schwarzschild horizon of a black hole suffers from Unruh-Hawking noise, which degrades communication channel capacities. Ignoring time dilation, which affects all channels equally, we show that for bosonic communication using single and dual rail encoding the classical channel capacity reaches a finite value and the quantum channel capacity falls off exponentially. The latter defines an effective horizon, beyond which quantum communication becomes exponentially resource inefficient. The characteristic length scale associated with this quantum horizon depends on the mass of the black hole and the frequency of the communication channel.
Communication between a free-falling observer and an observer hovering above the Schwarzschild horizon of a black hole suffers from Unruh-Hawking noise, which degrades communication channels. Ignoring time dilation, which affects all channels equally, we show that for bosonic communication using single- and dual-rail encoding, the classical channel capacity reaches a finite value and the quantum coherent information tends to zero. We conclude that classical correlations still exist at infinite acceleration, whereas the quantum coherence is fully removed.
We analyze the entanglement degradation provoked by the Hawking effect in a bipartite system Alice-Rob when Rob is in the proximities of a Schwarzschild black hole while Alice is free falling into it. We will obtain the limit in which the tools imported from the Unruh entanglement degradation phenomenon can be used properly, keeping control on the approximation. As a result, we will be able to determine the degree of entanglement as a function of the distance of Rob to the event horizon, the mass of the black hole, and the frequency of Rob's entangled modes. By means of this analysis we will show that all the interesting phenomena occur in the vicinity of the event horizon and that the presence of event horizons do not effectively degrade the entanglement when Rob is far off the black hole. The universality of the phenomenon is presented: There are not fundamental differences for different masses when working in the natural unit system adapted to each black hole. We also discuss some aspects of the localization of Alice and Rob states. All this study is done without using the single mode approximation.
Abstract We examine the late-time evolution of a qubit (or Unruh-De Witt detector) that hovers very near to the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole, while interacting with a free quantum scalar field. The calculation is carried out perturbatively in the dimensionless qubit/field coupling g, but rather than computing the qubit excitation rate due to field interactions (as is often done), we instead use Open EFT techniques to compute the late-time evolution to all orders in g2t/rs (while neglecting order g4t/rs effects) where rs = 2GM is the Schwarzschild radius. We show that for qubits sufficiently close to the horizon the late-time evolution takes a simple universal form that depends only on the near-horizon geometry, assuming only that the quantum field is prepared in a Hadamard-type state (such as the Hartle-Hawking or Unruh vacua). When the redshifted energy difference, ω∞, between the two qubit states (as measured by a distant observer looking at the detector) satisfies ω∞rs ≪ 1 this universal evolution becomes Markovian and describes an exponential approach to equilibrium with the Hawking radiation, with the off-diagonal and diagonal components of the qubit density matrix relaxing to equilibrium with different characteristic times, both of order rs/g2.
We investigate the Hawking effect on entangled fields. By considering a scalar field which is in a two-mode squeezed state from the point of view of freely falling (Kruskal) observers crossing the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole, we study the degradation of quantum and classical correlations in the state from the perspective of physical (Schwarzschild) observers confined outside the horizon. Due to monogamy constraints on the entanglement distribution, we show that the lost bipartite entanglement is recovered as multipartite entanglement among modes inside and outside the horizon. In the limit of a small-mass black hole, no bipartite entanglement is detected outside the horizon, while the genuine multipartite entanglement interlinking the inner and outer regions grows infinitely.
Abstract The merging of quantum information science with the relativity theory presents novel opportunities for understanding the enigmas surrounding the transmission of information in relation to black holes. For this purpose, we study the quantumness near a Schwarzschild black hole in a practical model under decoherence. The scenario we consider in this paper is that a stationary particle in the flat region interacts with its surroundings while another particle experiences free fall in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild black hole’s event horizon. We explore the impacts of Hawking radiation and decoherence on the system under investigation and find that these effects can limit the survival of quantum characteristics, but cannot destroy them completely. Hence, the results of this study possess the potential to yield valuable insights into the comprehension of the quantum properties of a real system operating within a curved space-time framework.
In this Ph.D. thesis, I investigate the communication abilities of non-inertial observers and the precision to which they can measure parametrized states. I introduce relativistic quantum field theory with field quantisation, and the definition and transformations of mode functions in Minkowski, Schwarzschild and Rindler spaces. I introduce information theory by discussing the nature of information, defining the entropic information measures, and highlighting the differences between classical and quantum information. I review the field of relativistic quantum information. We investigate the communication abilities of an inertial observer to a relativistic observer hovering above a Schwarzschild black hole, using the Rindler approximation. We compare both classical communication and quantum entanglement generation of the state merging protocol, for both the single and dual rail encodings. We find that while classical communication remains finite right up to the horizon, the quantum entanglement generation tends to zero. We investigate the observers' abilities to precisely measure the parameter of a state that is communicated between Alice and Rob. This parameter was encoded to either the amplitudes of a single excitation state or the phase of a NOON state. With NOON states the dual rail encoding provided greater precision, which is different to the results for the other situations. The precision was maximum for a particular number of excitations in the NOON state. We calculated the bipartite communication for Alice-Rob and Alice-AntiRob beyond the single mode approximation. Rob and AntiRob are causally disconnected counter-accelerating observers. We found that Alice must choose in advance with whom, Rob or AntiRob she wants to create entanglement using a particular setup. She could communicate classically to both.