In quantum communication protocols the existence of a shared reference frame between two spatially separated parties is normally presumed. However, in many practical situations we are faced with the problem of misaligned reference frames. In this paper, we study communication between two inertial observers who have partial knowledge about the Lorentz transformation that relates their frames of reference. Since every Lorentz transformation can be decomposed into a pure boost followed by a rotation, we begin by analysing the effects on communication when the parties have partial knowledge about the transformation relating their frames, when the transformation is either a rotation or pure boost. This then enables us to investigate how the efficiency of communication is affected due to partially correlated inertial reference frames related by an arbitrary Lorentz transformation. Furthermore, we show how the results of previous studies where reference frames are completely uncorrelated are recovered from our results in appropriate limits.
Decoherence effect on multipartite entanglement in non-inertial frames is investigated. GHZ state is considered to be shared between the partners with one partner in inertial frame whereas the other two in accelerated frames. One-tangle and π-tangles are used to quantify the entanglement of the multipartite system influenced by phase damping and phase flip channels. It is seen that for phase damping channel, entanglement sudden death (ESD) occurs for p>0.5 in the infinite acceleration limit. On the other hand, in case of phase flip channel, ESD behaviour happens around 50% decoherence. It is a…
After a review of the existing theory of non-inertial frames and mathematical observers in Minkowski space-time we give the explicit expression of a family of such frames obtained from the inertial ones by means of point-dependent Lorentz transformations as suggested by the locality principle. These non-inertial frames have non-Euclidean 3-spaces and contain the differentially rotating ones in Euclidean 3-spaces as a subcase. Then we discuss how to replace mathematical accelerated observers with dynamical ones (their world-lines belong to interacting particles in an isolated system) and of how…
We consider the behaviour of bipartite and tripartite non-locality between fermionic entangled states shared by observers, one of whom uniformly accelerates. We find that while fermionic entanglement persists for arbitrarily large acceleration, the Bell/CHSH inequalities cannot be violated for sufficiently large but finite acceleration. However the Svetlichny inequality, which is a measure of genuine tripartite non-locality, can be violated for any finite value of the acceleration.
We investigate the Unruh effect on entanglement taking into account the spin degree of freedom of the Dirac field. We analyze spin Bell states in this setting, obtaining their entanglement dependance on the acceleration of one of the partners. Then, we consider simple analogs to the occupation number entangled state |00>+|11>, but with spin quantum numbers for |11> showing that, despite their apparent similitude, while the spinless case is always qubit x qubit, for the spin case acceleration produces a qubit x qu4it state. We also introduce a procedure to consistently erase the spin informatio…
Entanglement degradation caused by the Unruh effect is discussed for the tripartite GHZ or W states constructed by modes of a non-interacting quantum field viewed by one inertial observer and two uniformly accelerated observers. For fermionic states, the Unruh effect even for infinite accelerations cannot completely remove the entanglement. However, for the bosonic states, the situation is different and the entanglement vanishes asymptotically. Also, the entanglement is studied for the bipartite subsystems. While for the GHZ states all the bipartite subsystems are identically disentangled, for…
In a recent paper (arXiv:1701.04298 [quant-ph]) Toroš, Großardt and Bassi claim that the potential necessary to support a composite particle in a gravitational field must necessarily cancel the relativistic coupling between internal and external degrees of freedom. As such a coupling is responsible for the gravitational redshift measured in numerous experiments, the above statement is clearly incorrect. We identify the simple mistake in the paper responsible for the incorrect claim.
Effect of decoherence and correlated noise on the entanglement of X-type state of the Dirac fields in the non-inertial frame is investigated. A two qubit X-state is considered to be shared between the partners where Alice is in inertial frame and Rob in an accelerated frame. The concurrence is used to quantify the entanglement of the X-state system influenced by time correlated amplitude damping, depolarizing and bit flip channels. It is seen that amplitude damping and bit flip channels heavily influence the entanglement of the system as compared to the depolarizing channel. It is found possib…
Two observers determine the entanglement between two free bosonic modes by each detecting one of the modes and observing the correlations between their measurements. We show that a state which is maximally entangled in an inertial frame becomes less entangled if the observers are relatively accelerated. This phenomenon, which is a consequence of the Unruh effect, shows that entanglement is an observer-dependent quantity in non-inertial frames. In the high acceleration limit, our results can be applied to a non-accelerated observer falling into a black hole while the accelerated one barely esca…
We study the distribution of entanglement between modes of a free scalar field from the perspective of observers in uniform acceleration. We consider a two-mode squeezed state of the field from an inertial perspective, and analytically study the degradation of entanglement due to the Unruh effect, in the cases of either one or both observers undergoing uniform acceleration. We find that for two observers undergoing finite acceleration, the entanglement vanishes between the lowest frequency modes. The loss of entanglement is precisely explained as a redistribution of the inertial entanglement i…
Our recent paper (arXiv:1701.04298 [quant-ph]) discussed the occurrence of a coupling of centre of mass and internal degrees of freedom for complex quantum systems in non-inertial frames. There, we pointed out that an external force supporting the system against gravity plays a crucial role for the coupling between center of mass position to the internal degrees of freedom. In a comment (arXiv:1702.06670 [quant-ph]) to our paper, Pikovski et al. question our conclusion and present the argument that the lack of the coupling term would be in contradiction with the observation of gravitational ti…
A recent analysis by Pikovski et al. [Nat. Phys. 11, 668 (2015)] has triggered interest in the question of how to include relativistic corrections in the quantum dynamics governing many-particle systems in a gravitational field. Here we show how the center-of-mass motion of a quantum system subject to gravity can be derived more rigorously, addressing the ambiguous definition of relativistic center-of-mass coordinates. We further demonstrate that, contrary to the prediction by Pikovski et al., external forces play a crucial role in the relativistic coupling of internal and external degrees of …
The Minkowski vacuum $|0\rangle_M$, which for an inertial observer is devoid of particles, is treated as a thermal bath by Rindler observers living in a single Rindler wedge, as a result of the discrepancy in the definition of positive frequency between the two classes of observers and a strong entanglement between degrees of freedom in the left and right Rindler wedges. We revisit, in the context of a free scalar Klein-Gordon field, the problem of quantification of the correlations between an inertial observer Alice and left/right Rindler observes Rob/AntiRob. We emphasize the analysis of inf…
Entanglement between two free bosonic modes can be determined via detection of each mode by different observers and then observing the correlations between their measurements. We show that such entanglement is degraded as a function of time if one observer begins in a state of inertial motion but ends in a state of uniform acceleration while the other remains inertial. At late times we recover previously established results for observers in relative uniform acceleration.
We consider a continuous-variable quantum teleportation protocol between a uniformly accelerated sender in the right Rindler wedge, a conformal receiver restricted to the future light cone, and an inertial observer in the Minkowski vacuum. Using a non-perturbative quantum circuit model, the accelerated observer interacts unitarily with the Rindler modes of the field, thereby accessing entanglement of the vacuum as a resource. We find that a Rindler-displaced Minkowski vacuum state prepared and teleported by the accelerated observer appears mixed according to the inertial observer, despite a re…
We analyse the effect of bounding the occupation number of bosonic field modes on the correlations among all the different spatial-temporal regions in a setting in which we have a space-time with a horizon along with an inertial observer. We show that the entanglement between A (inertial observer) and R (uniformly accelerated observer) depends on the bound N, contrary to the fermionic case. Whether or not decoherence increases with N depends on the value of the acceleration a. Concerning the bipartition A-antiR (Alice with an observer in Rindler's region IV), we show that no entanglement is cr…
We study communication between an inertial observer and one of two causally-disconnected counter accelerating observers. We will restrict the quantum channel considering inertial-to-accelerated bipartite classical and quantum communication over different sets of Unruh modes (single-rail or dual-rail encoding). We find that the coherent information (and therefore, the amount of entanglement that can be generated via state merging protocol) in this strongly restricted channel presents some interesting monogamy properties between the inertial and only one of the accelerated observers if we take a…
The π-tangle is used to study the behavior of entanglement of a nonmaximal tripartite state of both Dirac and scalar fields in accelerated frame. For Dirac fields, the degree of degradation with acceleration of both one-tangle of accelerated observer and π-tangle, for the same initial entanglement, is different by just interchanging the values of probability amplitudes. A fraction of both one-tangles and the π-tangle always survives for any choice of acceleration and the degree of initial entanglement. For scalar field, the one-tangle of accelerated observer depends on the choice of values of …
We analyse the entanglement tradeoff between particle and anti-particle modes of a Dirac field from the perspective of inertial and uniformly accelerated observers. Our results show that a redistribution of entanglement between particle and anti-particle modes plays a key role in the survival of fermionic field entanglement in the infinite acceleration limit.
The sampled negative energy density seen by inertial observers, in arbitrary quantum states is limited by quantum inequalities, which take the form of an inverse relation between the magnitude and duration of the negative energy. The quantum inequalities severely limit the utilization of negative energy to produce gross macroscopic effects, such as violations of the second law of thermodynamics. The restrictions on the sampled energy density along the worldlines of accelerated observers are much weaker than for inertial observers. Here we will illustrate this with several explicit examples. We…
A quantum mechanical observer might be describable as having a reference system that is a superposition of classical inertial reference frames. The present paper suggests a possible weighting function in such superpositions, determined by the product of the observer's wavefunction and the Fourier transform of the wavefunction at each point in phase space. This suggestion is made because each of these factors has a simple interpretation as a probability density amplitude. Other forms for the weighting function may well be possible.
We analyse the entanglement tradeoff between particle and anti-particle modes of a charged bosonic field between inertial and uniformly accelerated observers. In contrast with previous results for fermionic fields, we find that the entanglement redistribution between particle and antiparticle modes does not prevent the entanglement from vanishing in the infinite acceleration limit.
We generalise the study of fermionic and bosonic entanglement in non-inertial frames to fields of arbitrary spin and beyond the single mode approximation. After the general analysis we particularise for two interesting cases: entanglement between an inertial and an accelerated observer for massless fields of spin 1 (electromagnetic) and 3/2 (Rarita-Schwinger). We show that in the limit of infinite acceleration, no significant differences appear between the different spin fields for the states considered.
We introduce a relativistic version of quantum encryption protocol by considering two inertial observers who wish to securely transmit quantum information encoded in a free scalar quantum field state forming Minkowski particles. In a non-relativistic setting a certain amount of shared classical resources is necessary to perfectly encrypt the state. We show that in the case of a uniformly accelerated eavesdropper the communicating parties need to share (asymptotically in the limit of infinite acceleration) just half of the classical resources.
Building on the well-known Unruh-Davies effect, we examine the effects of projective measurements and quantum communications between accelerated and stationary observers. We find that the projective measurement by a uniformly accelerated observer can excite real particles from the vacuum in the inertial frame, even if no additional particles are created by the measurement process in the accelerating frame. Furthermore, we show that the particles created by this accelerating measurement can be highly entangled in the inertial frame, and it is also possible to use this process to generate even m…
In this paper we show that the quantum channel between two inertial observers who transmit quantum information by sending realistic photonic wave packets is a well-studied channel in quantum Shannon theory -- the Pauli channel. The parameters of the Pauli channel and therefore its classical and quantum capacity depend on the magnitude of the Lorentz boost relating the two observers. The most striking consequence is that two inertial observers whose Pauli channel has initially zero quantum capacity can achieve nonzero quantum communication rates (reaching in principle its maximal value equal to…
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 m…
Entanglement of Dirac fields has been studied and it is known to decrease with increasing acceleration when a quantum state is shared between users in non-inertial frames. A new form of an entangled vacuum state observed by the accelerated observer is postulated in which it is assumed that entanglement is present between the modes of the quantum field with sharp and opposite momenta defined in two causally disconnected regions of space-time. We find that this assumption does not affect the entanglement of the system.
We describe the spin and momentum degrees of freedom of a system of two massive spin--$\tfrac{1}{2}$ particles as a 4 qubit system. Then we explicitly show how the entanglement changes between different partitions of the qubits, when considered by different inertial observers. Although the two particle entanglement corresponding to a partition into Alice's and Bob's subsystems is, as often stated in the literature, invariant under Lorentz boosts, the entanglement with respect to other partitions of the Hilbert space on the other hand, is not. It certainly does depend on the chosen inertial fra…
An open question in the field of relativistic quantum information is how parties in arbitrary motion may distribute and store quantum entanglement. We propose a scheme for storing quantum information in the field modes of cavities moving in flat space-time and analyze it in a quantum field theoretical framework. In contrast to previous work that found entanglement degradation between observers moving with uniform acceleration, we find the quantum information in such systems is protected. We further discuss a method for establishing the entanglement in the first place and show that in principle…
We show that the Unruh effect can create net quantum entanglement between inertial and accelerated observers depending on the choice of the inertial state. This striking result banishes the extended belief that the Unruh effect can only destroy entanglement and furthermore provides a new and unexpected source for finding experimental evidence of the Unruh and Hawking effects.
We consider the system of free scalar field, which is assumed to be a two-mode squeezed state from an inertial point of view. This setting allows the use of entanglement measure for continuous variables, which can be applied to discuss free and bound entanglement from the point of view from non-inertial observer.
