A state that an inertial observer in Minkowski space perceives to be the vacuum will appear to an accelerating observer to be a thermal bath of radiation. We study the impact of this Davies-Fulling-Unruh noise on communication, particularly quantum communication from an inertial sender to an accelerating observer and private communication between two inertial observers in the presence of an accelerating eavesdropper. In both cases, we establish compact, tractable formulas for the associated communication capacities assuming encodings that allow a single excitation in one of a fixed number of modes per use of the communications channel. Our contributions include a rigorous presentation of the general theory of the private quantum capacity as well as a detailed analysis of the structure of these channels, including their group-theoretic properties and a proof that they are conjugate degradable. Connections between the Unruh channel and optical amplifiers are also discussed.
The vacuum expectation value of the current density for a charged scalar field is investigated in Rindler spacetime with a part of spatial dimensions compactified to a torus. It is assumed that the field is prepared in the Fulling-Rindler vacuum state. For general values of the phases in the periodicity conditions and the lengths of compact dimensions, the expressions are provided for the Hadamard function and vacuum currents. The current density along compact dimensions is a periodic function of the magnetic flux enclosed by those dimensions and vanishes on the Rindler horizon. The obtained r…
In this paper we study the Dirac equation in the Rindler spacetime. The solution of the wave equation in an accelerated reference frame is obtained. The differential equation associated to this wave equation is mapped into a Sturm-Liouville problem of a Schrödinger-like equation. We derive a compact expression for the energy spectrum associated with the Dirac equation in an accelerated reference. It is shown that the noninertial effect of the accelerated reference frame mimics an external potential in the Dirac equation and, moreover, allows the formation of bound states.
We revise the extended uncertainty relations for the Rindler and Friedmann spacetimes recently discussed by Dabrowski and Wagner in [9]. We reveal these results to be coordinate dependent expressions of the invariant uncertainty relations recently derived for general 3-dimensional spaces of constant curvature in [10]. Moreover, we show that the non-zero minimum standard deviations of the momentum in [9] are just artifacts caused by an unfavorable choice of coordinate systems which can be removed by standard arguments of geodesic completion.
Wightman function, the vacuum expectation values of the field square and the energy-momentum tensor are evaluated for a scalar field obeying mixed boundary condition on a spherical brane in (D+1)-dimensional Rindler-like spacetime $Ri\times S^{D-1}$, where $Ri$ is a two-dimensional Rindler spacetime. This spacetime approximates the near horizon geometry of (D+1) -dimensional black hole in the large mass limit. The vacuum expectation values are presented as the sum of boundary-free and brane-induced parts. Further we extract from the Wightman function for the boundary-free geometry the correspo…
We construct a Hamiltonian H whose discrete spectrum contains, in a certain limit, the Riemann zeros. H is derived from the action of a massless Dirac fermion living in a domain of Rindler spacetime, in 1+1 dimensions, that has a boundary given by the world line of a uniformly accelerated observer. The action contains a sum of delta function potentials that can be viewed as partially reflecting moving mirrors. An appropriate choice of the accelerations of the mirrors, provide primitive periodic orbits associated to the prime numbers $p$, whose periods, measured by the observer's clock, are log…
We introduce a method to compute particle detector transition probability in spacetime regions of general curved spacetimes provided that the curvature is not above a maximum threshold. In particular we use this method to compare the response of two detectors, one in a spherically symmetric gravitational field and the other one in Rindler spacetime to compare the Unruh and Hawking effects: We study the vacuum response of a detector freely falling through a stationary cavity in a Schwarzschild background as compared with the response of an equivalently accelerated detector traveling through an …
We investigate a two-level Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to a massless scalar field or its proper time derivative in $(1+1)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, in a quantum state whose correlation structure across the Rindler horizon mimics the stationary aspects of a firewall that Almheiri et al have argued to ensue in an evaporating black hole spacetime. Within first-order perturbation theory, we show that the detector's response on falling through the horizon is sudden but finite. The difference from the Minkowski vacuum response is proportional to $ω^{-2}\ln(|ω|)$ for the non-derivative dete…
The Minkowski vacuum state is expressed as an entangled state between the left and right Rindler wedges when it is constructed on the Rindler vacuum. In this paper, we further examine the entanglement structure and extend the expression to the future (expanding) and past (shrinking) Kasner spacetimes. This clarifies the origin of the quantum radiation produced by an Unruh--DeWitt detector in uniformly accelerated motion in the four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. We also investigate the two-dimensional massless case where the quantum radiation vanishes but the same entanglement structure exis…
Detector's response to coherent Rindler and Minkowski photons
Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati（印度理工学院古瓦哈提分校）；Wilczek Quantum Center, Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies（威尔切克量子中心，上海高等研究院）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）
Philosophical reflection on quantum field theory has tended to focus on how it revises our conception of what a particle is. However, there has been relatively little discussion of the threat to the "reality" of particles posed by the possibility of inequivalent quantizations of a classical field theory, i.e., inequivalent representations of the algebra of observables of the field in terms of operators on a Hilbert space. The threat is that each representation embodies its own distinctive conception of what a particle is, and how a "particle" will respond to a suitably operated detector. Our m…
Quantum gravity is expected to contain descriptions of semiclassical spacetime geometries in quantum superpositions. To date, no framework for modelling such superpositions has been devised. Here, we provide a new phenomenological description for the response of quantum probes (i.e. Unruh-deWitt detectors) on a spacetime manifold in quantum superposition. By introducing an additional control degree of freedom, one can assign a Hilbert space to the spacetime, allowing it to exist in a superposition of spatial or curvature states. Applying this approach to static de Sitter space, we discover sce…
Bases of exactly localized Minkowski and Rindler states on spacelike hypersurfaces are used to describe inertial and accelerated photon counting devices. It is found that the spacetime coordinates of photons absorbed by a pair of counteraccelerating detectors in causally disconnected Rindler wedges are correlated. If a photon is absorbed by a single accelerated detector the Minkowski vacuum collapses to a state containing at least one photon and that photon can be absorbed by an inertial detector.
We studied the change of the nonlocal correlation of the entanglement in Rindler spacetime by showing that the Unruh effect can be interpreted as a noisy quantum channel having a complete positive and trace preserving map with an operator sum representation. It is shown that the entanglement fidelity is obtained in analytic form from the operator sum representation, which agrees well numerically with the entanglement monotone and the entanglement measure obtained previously. Non-zero entropy exchange between the system Q and the region II of the Rindler wedge indicates the nonlocal correlation…
