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Classical and Quantum Gravity

The geometric phase of a two-level atom under the Hawking effect in a Kerr black hole

Jiliang Jing, Zhipeng Cao, Xiaobao Liu, Zehua Tian

Published Jan 14, 2020• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract We study the Hawking effect in terms of the geometric phase for a two-level atom coupled to vacuum fluctuations in the background of Kerr black hole in a gedanken experiment. Since the atom interacts with a bath of fluctuating massless scalar field, its geometric phase for the nonunitary evolution turns out to be affected by the spacetime curvature that backscatters the vacuum field modes. We examine the geometric phase for two kinds of vacua, i.e. the Unruh vacuum and the Candelas–Chrzanowski–Howard vacuum. We find that for both of these two cases, the geometric phase of the static atom locating outside the infinite redshift surface (or the stationary atom locating inside the ergosphere) exposes that the atom behaves as if it were immersed in a thermal radiation at the Hawking temperature from the Kerr black hole. Therefore, our results show that one in principle can reveal the Hawking effect in the Kerr black hole by analyzing the correction of the geometric phase as opposed to that in a flat spacetime.

DOI
10.1088/1361-6382/ab6b6d

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Abstract We study the Hawking effect in terms of the geometric phase for a two-level atom coupled to vacuum fluctuations in the background of Kerr black hole in a gedanken experiment. Since the atom interacts with a bath of fluctuating massless scalar field, its geometric phase for the nonunitary evolution turns out to be affected by the spacetime curvature that backscatters the vacuum field modes. We examine the geometric phase for two kinds of vacua, i.e. the Unruh vacuum and the Candelas–Chrzanowski–Howard vacuum. We find that for both of these two cases, the geometric phase of the static atom locating outside the infinite redshift surface (or the stationary atom locating inside the ergosphere) exposes that the atom behaves as if it were immersed in a thermal radiation at the Hawking temperature from the Kerr black hole. Therefore, our results show that one in principle can reveal the Hawking effect in the Kerr black hole by analyzing the correction of the geometric phase as opposed to that in a flat spacetime.
We investigate the geometric phase for a two-level atom interacting with massless scalar field in the background spacetime of a cosmic string with torsion in the framework of open quantum systems. We show that the geometric phase depends on not only the inherent properties of this atom but also on the topological properties of the background spacetime. The correction to the geometric phase of the atom derives from a composite effect of the cosmic string and screw dislocation associated with the curvature and torsion, respectively. The numerical results of the correction to the geometric phase are also present. It is seen that the modification of the phase oscillates around zero and the amplitude of the correction decreases gradually, with the increase of the distance r between the atom and line defects. When the atom gets close to the line defects, the correction will increase significantly but finally tend to a finite value. The behavior of the geometric phase with the variation of the atomic position in three different types of topological defect spacetimes, i.e. , the cosmic string spacetime, screw dislocation spacetime and cosmic string spacetime with torsion, are also shown. We note that the geometric phase in the case of cosmic string spacetime is different from that of other two spacetimes, which suggests that the presence of torsion can significantly affect the geometric phase of the atom, especially in the region near the topological defects. In addition, the geometric phase for the two-level atom which results from the thermal fluctuation of the thermal bath is studied. It is shown that the geometric phase increases with the growth of the temperature T .
We consider the entanglement dynamics between two-level atoms in a rotating black hole background. In our model the two-atom system is envisaged as an open system coupled with a massless scalar field prepared in one of the physical vacuum states of interest. We employ the quantum master equation in the Born-Markov approximation in order to describe the time evolution of the atomic subsystem. We investigate two different states of motion for the atoms, namely static atoms and also stationary atoms with zero angular momentum. The purpose of this work is to expound the impact on the creation of entanglement coming from the combined action of the different physical processes underlying the Hawking effect and the Unruh-Starobinskii effect. We demonstrate that, in the scenario of rotating black holes, the degree of quantum entanglement is significantly modified due to the phenomenon of superradiance in comparison with the analogous cases in a Schwarzschild spacetime. In the perspective of a zero angular momentum observer (ZAMO), one is allowed to probe entanglement dynamics inside the ergosphere, since static observers cannot exist within such a region. On the other hand, the presence of superradiant modes could be a source for violation of complete positivity. This is verified when the quantum field is prepared in the Frolov-Thorne vacuum state. In this exceptional situation, we raise the possibility that the loss of complete positivity is due to the breakdown of the Markovian approximation, which means that any arbitrary physically admissible initial state of the two atoms would not be capable to hold, with time evolution, its interpretation as a physical state inasmuch as negative probabilities are generated by the dynamical map.
We investigate the effect of quantum metric fluctuations on qubits that are gravitationally coupled to a background spacetime. In our first example, we study the propagation of a qubit in flat spacetime whose metric is subject to flat quantum fluctuations with a Gaussian spectrum. We find that these fluctuations cause two changes in the state of the qubit: they lead to a phase drift, as well as the expected exponential suppression (decoherence) of the off-diagonal terms in the density matrix. Although in principle observable, the current state of technology prohibits the experimental demonstration of the phase drift. Second, we calculate the decoherence of a qubit in a circular orbit around a Schwarzschild black hole. The no-hair theorems suggest a quantum state for the metric in which the black hole's mass fluctuates with a thermal spectrum at the Hawking temperature. Again, we find that the orbiting qubit undergoes decoherence and a phase drift that both depend on the temperature of the black hole. Third, we study the interaction of coherent and squeezed gravitational waves with a qubit in uniform motion. Finally, we investigate the decoherence of an accelerating qubit in Minkowski spacetime due to the Unruh effect. In this case decoherence is not due to fluctuations in the metric, but instead is caused by coupling (which we model with a standard Hamiltonian) between the qubit and the thermal cloud of Unruh particles bathing it. When the accelerating qubit is entangled with a stationary partner, the decoherence should induce a corresponding loss in teleportation fidelity.
We show the appearance of geometric phase in a Dirac particle traversing in nonrelativistic limit in a time-independent gravitational field. This turns out to be similar to the one originally described as a geometric phase in magnetic fields. We explore the geometric phase in the Kerr and Schwarzschild geometries, which have significant astrophysical implications. Nevertheless, the work can be extended to any spacetime background including that of time-dependent. In the Kerr background, i.e. around a rotating black hole, geometric phase reveals both the Aharonov–Bohm effect and Pancharatnam–Berry phase. However, in a Schwarzschild geometry, i.e. around a nonrotating black hole, only the latter emerges. We expect that our assertions can be validated in both the strong gravity scenarios, like the spacetime around black holes, and weak gravity environment around Earth.
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.