The master equation describing the completely positive time evolution of a uniformly accelerated two-level system in weak interaction with a scalar field in the Minkowski vacuum is derived and explicitly solved. It encodes the well known Unruh effect, leading to a purely thermal equilibrium state. This asymptotic state turns out to be entangled when the uniformly accelerating system is composed by two, independent two-level atoms.
The master equation describing the completely positive time evolution of a uniformly accelerated two-level system in weak interaction with a scalar field in the Minkowski vacuum is derived and explicitly solved. It encodes the well known Unruh effect, leading to a purely thermal equilibrium state. This asymptotic state turns out to be entangled when the uniformly accelerating system is composed by two, independent two-level atoms.
The master equation describing the completely positive time evolution of a uniformly accelerated two-level system in weak interaction with a scalar field in the Minkowski vacuum is derived and explicitly solved. The moving system is found to be subjected to dissipation that drives its density matrix to a purely thermal equilibrium state, exhibiting a nonvanishing probability of spontaneous excitation, this phenomenon being usually referred to as the Unruh effect. Remarkably, when the uniformly accelerating system is composed by two, independent two-level atoms, the corresponding asymptotic, equilibrium state turns out to be entangled.
We study, in the paradigm of open quantum systems, the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms with the same acceleration perpendicular to the separation. The two-atom system is treated as an open system coupled with a bath of fluctuating massless scalar fields in the Minkowski vacuum, and the master equation that governs its evolution is derived. It has been found that, for accelerated atoms with a nonvanishing separation, entanglement sudden death is a general feature when the initial state is entangled, while for those in a separable initial state, entanglement sudden birth only happens for atoms with an appropriate interatomic separation and sufficiently small acceleration. Remarkably, accelerated atoms can get entangled in certain circumstances while the inertial ones in the Minkowski vacuum cannot. A comparison between the results of accelerated atoms and those of static ones in a thermal bath shows that uniformly accelerated atoms exhibit features distinct from those immersed in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature in terms of entanglement dynamics.
We study the influence of the environment-induced interatomic interaction, which is usually neglected, on the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms coupled with fluctuating massless scalar fields in the Minkowski vacuum. When the two-atom system is initially prepared in a separable state such that the two atoms are in the ground and excited states respectively, the environment-induced interatomic interaction assists entanglement generation, in the sense that the parameter space of acceleration and interatomic separation that allows entanglement generation is enlarged, the rate of entanglement generation at the initial time is enhanced, and the maximum of concurrence generated during evolution is increased compared with when the environment-induced interaction is neglected. Remarkably, the rate of entanglement generation at the initial time and the maximal concurrence generated during evolution decrease monotonically with the acceleration, in contrast to that they exhibit a nonmonotonic behavior as the acceleration varies when the environment-induced interatomic interaction is neglected. In other words, the anti-Unruh phenomenon in terms of the entanglement generation is deprived of by the consideration of the environment-induced interatomic interaction.
We study the influence of the environment-induced interatomic interaction, which is usually neglected, on the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms coupled with fluctuating massless scalar fields in the Minkowski vacuum. When the two-atom system is initially prepared in a separable state such that the two atoms are in the ground and excited states respectively, the environment-induced interatomic interaction assists entanglement generation, in the sense that the parameter space of acceleration and interatomic separation that allows entanglement generation is enlarged, the rate of entanglement generation at the initial time is enhanced, and the maximum of concurrence generated during evolution is increased compared with when the environment-induced interaction is neglected. Remarkably, the rate of entanglement generation at the initial time and the maximal concurrence generated during evolution decrease monotonically with the acceleration, in contrast to that they exhibit a non-monotonic behavior as the acceleration varies when the environment-induced interatomic interaction is neglected. In other words, the anti-Unruh phenomenon in terms of the entanglement generation is deprived of by the consideration of the environment-induced interatomic interaction.
We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms with the same acceleration perpendicular to their separation. The two-atom system is treated as an open system coupled with fluctuating electromagnetic fields in the Minkowski vacuum, and in the Born--Markov approximation the master equation that describes the completely positive time evolution of the two-atom system is derived. In particular, we investigate the phenomena of entanglement degradation, generation, revival and enhancement. As opposed to the scalar-field case, the entanglement dynamics is crucially dependent on the polarization directions of the atoms. For the two-atom system with certain acceleration and separation, the polarization directions of the atoms may determine whether entanglement generation, revival or enhancement happens, while for entanglement degradation, they affect the decay rate of entanglement. A comparison between the entanglement evolution of accelerated atoms and that of static ones immersed in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature shows that they are the same only when the acceleration is extremely small.
We study, in the framework of open systems, the entanglement generation of two independent uniformly accelerated atoms in interaction with the vacuum fluctuations of massless scalar fields subjected to a reflecting plane boundary. We demonstrate that, with the presence of the boundary, the accelerated atoms exhibit distinct features from static ones in a thermal bath at the corresponding Unruh temperature in terms of the entanglement creation at the neighborhood of the initial time. In this sense, accelerated atoms in vacuum do not necessarily have to behave as if they were static in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature.