It has been proposed that quantum features of the gravitational field can be exposed experimentally by employing gravity as a mediator of entanglement. We show that in order to witness this type of entanglement experimentally, strong limits on acceleration noise, which has been neglected in previous work, must be overcome. In the case of two particles of similar mass, Casimir-Polder forces lead to a fundamental limit of tenths of femtometers per second squared per root Hertz. Limits are between three and six orders of magnitude less strict for two particles of unequal mass, depending on collisional decoherence.
We study the effects of acceleration on fermionic Gaussian states of localized modes of a Dirac field. We consider two wave-packets in a Gaussian state and transform these to an accelerated frame of reference. In particular, we formulate the action of this transformation as a fermionic quantum channel. Having developed the general framework for fermions, we then investigate the entanglement of the vacuum, as well as the entanglement in Bell states. We find that with increasing acceleration vacuum entanglement increases, while the entanglement of Bell states decreases. Notably, our results have…
We explore whether acceleration assists entanglement harvesting for a pair of uniformly accelerated detectors in three different acceleration scenarios, i.e., parallel, anti-parallel and mutually perpendicular acceleration, both in the sense of the entanglement harvested and harvesting-achievable separation between the two detectors. Within the framework of entanglement harvesting protocols and the Unruh-DeWitt model of detectors locally interacting with massless scalar fields via a Gaussian switching function with an interaction duration parameter, we find that, in the sense of the entangleme…
This is a comment on articles Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240401 (2017) [arXiv:1707.06050] and Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 240402 (2017) [arXiv:1707.06036]. We argue that gravity-induced entanglement by Newtonian forces is agnostic to the quantum or classical nature of the gravitational true degrees of freedom.
We study, in the framework of the entanglement harvesting protocol, the entanglement harvesting of both a pair of inertial and uniformly accelerated detectors locally interacting with vacuum massless scalar fields subjected to a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. We find that the presence of the boundary generally degrades the harvested entanglement when two detectors are very close to the boundary. However, when the distance between detectors and the boundary becomes comparable to the interaction duration parameter, the amount of the harvested entanglement approaches a peak, which even goes…
We study the properties of the transition probability and entanglement harvesting phenomenon for circularly accelerated detectors locally interacting with massless scalar fields. The dependence of the transition probability on the parameters associated with the circular motion is first analyzed in detail. By a cross-comparison with the situation of the uniformly accelerated motion, we obtain that the transition probability and the possible thermalization behavior for detectors rotating with an extremely large circular radius are analogous to that for uniformly accelerated detectors, but for a …
We consider two entangled accelerating qubits coupled with real scalar fields, each described by the Unruh-Wald model. It is demonstrated that because of the Unruh effect, the bipartite entanglement of the two qubits suddenly dies when the acceleration of one or more qubits are large enough. We also consider three entangled accelerating qubits in GHZ state and in W state, with equal acceleration-frequency ratio, and found that in either state, the tripartite entanglement suddenly dies at a certain value of acceleration-frequency ratio. The equivalence between the Rindler metric and the Schwarz…
Collapse-based models for gravity do not violate the entanglement-based witness of non-classicality
QICI Quantum Information and Computation Initiative, School of Computing and Data Science, The University of Hong Kong（香港大学计算与数据科学学院量子信息与计算倡议）；Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford（牛津大学克拉伦登实验室）
We discuss the physical interpretation of the gravity mediated entanglement effect. We show how to read it in terms of quantum reference systems. We pinpoint the single gravitational degree of freedom mediating the entanglement. We clarify why the distinction between longitudinal and transverse degrees of freedom is irrelevant for the interpretation of the results. We discuss the relation between the LOCC theorem and the interpretation of the effect, its different relevance for, respectively, the quantum gravity and quantum information communities, and the reason for the excitement raised by t…
Black hole entropy is one of the few windows toward the quantum aspects of gravitation and its study over the years have highlighted the holographic nature of gravity. At the non-perturbative level in quantum gravity, promising explanations are being explored in terms of the entanglement entropy between regions of space. In the context of loop quantum gravity, this translates into the analysis of the correlations between regions of the spin network states defining the quantum state of geometry of space. In this paper, we explore a class of states, motivated by results in condensed matter physi…
We consider the coupling of quantum fields to classical gravity in the formalism of ensembles on configuration space, a model that allows a consistent formulation of interacting classical and quantum systems. Explicit calculations show that there are solutions for which two quantum fields are in an entangled state, even though their interaction occurs solely via a common classical gravitational field, and that such entangled solutions can evolve from initially unentangled ones. These results support the observation of a previous paper that an observed generation of entanglement would not provi…
We investigate the generation rate of quantum gravity induced entanglement of masses(QGEM) in setup with multiple quantum massive particles, among of which only the gravity interaction due to the Newton potential is taken into account. When the distance between any two adjacent Stern-Gerlach (SG) devices is fixed, we consider all the possible configurations of the setup with the same number of particles. In particular, we systemically analyze the case of particle number n=4 and find that the prism setup with a massive particle at the center is the most efficient setup for the entanglement gene…
We study the influence of acceleration on the twin-Fock state which is a class of specific multibody entangled quantum state and was already realized experimentally with high precision and sensitivity. We show that the multi-body quantum entanglement can be increased with the acceleration, consistent with the "anti-Unruh effect" in reference to the counterintuitive cooling previously pointed out for an accelerated detector coupled to the vacuum. In particular, this kind of entanglement increase can lead to the improvement of the phase sensitivity, which provides a way to test the anti-Unruh ef…
We argue that Hartle-Hawking states in the Regge quantum gravity model generically contain non-trivial entanglement between gravity and matter fields. Generic impossibility to talk about "matter in a point of space" is in line with the idea of an emergent spacetime, and as such could be taken as a possible candidate for a criterion for a plausible theory of quantum gravity. Finally, this new entanglement could be seen as an additional "effective interaction", which could possibly bring corrections to the weak equivalence principle.
We investigate the phenomenon of gravity-induced entanglement in optomechanical systems. Assuming photon number conservation and the Newtonian potential expanded up to the quadratic order of the oscillator positions, we exactly solve the dynamics of the optomehcanical systems. Then, we find that the phase difference due to the Newtonian gravity leads to the large entanglement of photons in separated cavities. We clarify the generating mechanism of large gravity-induced entanglements in optomechanical systems in an exact manner. We also determine the characteristic time to generate the maximal …
We analyze the dynamics of a gravity-induced entanglement for N massive particles. Considering the linear configuration of these particles, we investigate the entanglement between a specific pair of particles under the influence of the gravitational interaction between the massive particles. As the particle number increases, the specific particle pair decoheres more easily due to the gravitational interaction with other particles. The time scale of the gravity-induced decoherence is analytically determined. We also discuss the entanglement dynamics of initially entangled particles, which exemp…
Einstein's relativity theory demands that all meaningful physical objects should be defined covariantly, i.e. in a coordinate independent way. Concepts of relative velocity, acceleration, gravity acceleration and gravity potential are fundamental in Newton's theory and they are imprinted in everyone's physical intuition. Unfortunately, relativistic definitions of them are not commonly known or appreciated. Every now and then some confused authors use wrong, non-covariant, definitions of velocity, acceleration and gravity, based on their vague Newtonian intuitions and hidden in a superficial, o…
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 dependen…
We study the possibility that in the model introduced in \cite{GBN}, the Gauss-Bonnet term alone gives rise to the cosmic acceleration and super-acceleration in four-dimensional FLRW space-time at the late time. We also discuss transitions from deceleration to acceleration and acceleration to super-acceleration. We show that the Gauss-Bonnet invariant can drive the acceleration in the low redshift provided that its regularized coefficient has the same order as the squared of the ratio of the reduced Planck mass to the Hubble parameter.
We study the derivation of the effective equation of motion for a pointlike particle in the framework of quantum gravity. Just like the geodesic motion of a classical particle is a consequence of classical field theory coupled to general relativity, we introduce the similar notion of an effective equation of motion, but starting from an abstract quantum gravity description. In the presence of entanglement between gravity and matter, quantum effects give rise to modifications of the geodesic trajectory, primarily as a consequence of the nonzero overlap between various coherent states of the gra…
We investigate the effects of field temperature $T^{(f)}$ on the entanglement harvesting between two uniformly accelerated detectors. For their parallel motion, the thermal nature of fields does not produce any entanglement, and therefore, the outcome is the same as the non-thermal situation. On the contrary, $T^{(f)}$ affects entanglement harvesting when the detectors are in anti-parallel motion, i.e., when detectors $A$ and $B$ are in the right and left Rindler wedges, respectively. While for $T^{(f)}=0$ entanglement harvesting is possible for all values of $A$'s acceleration $a_A$, in the p…
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 ra…
Quantization of the gravity remains one of the most important, yet extremely illusive, challenges at the heart of modern physics. Any attempt to resolve this long-standing problem seems to be doomed, as the route to any direct empirical evidence (i.e., detecting gravitons) for shedding light on the quantum aspect of the gravity is far beyond the current capabilities. Recently, it has been discovered that gravitationally-induced entanglement, tailored in the interferometric frameworks, can be used to witness the quantum nature of the gravity. Even though these schemes offer promising tools for …
The Regge-Teitelboim formulation of gravity, which utilizes dynamical embeddings in a background space, effectively introduces source terms in the standard Einstein equations that are not attributable to the energy-momentum tensor. We show that for a simple class of embeddings of the Robertson-Walker metric, these source terms naturally generate cosmic acceleration.
