The preparation of quantum systems and the execution of quantum information tasks between distant users are always affected by gravitational and relativistic effects. In this work, we quantitatively analyze how the curved space-time background of the Earth affects the classical and quantum correlations between photon pairs that are initially prepared in a two-mode squeezed state. More specifically, considering the rotation of the Earth, the space-time around the Earth is described by the Kerr metric. Our results show that these state correlations, which initially increase for a specific range of satellite's orbital altitude, will gradually approach a finite value with increasing height of satellites orbit (when the special relativistic effects become relevant). More importantly, our analysis demonstrates that the changes of correlations generated by the total gravitational frequency shift could reach the level of <0.5$\%$ within the satellites height at geostationary Earth orbits.
Light wave-packets propagating from the Earth to satellites will be deformed by the curved background spacetime of the Earth, thus influencing the quantum state of light. We show that Gaussian coherence of photon pairs, which are initially prepared in a two-mode squeezed state, is affected by the curved spacetime background of the Earth. We demonstrate that quantum coherence of the state increases for a specific range of height h and then gradually approaches a finite value with further increasing height of the satellite's orbit in Kerr spacetime, because special relativistic effect are involv…
We introduce a protocol for a quantum switch in the gravitational field of a spherical mass and determine the time interval required for its realization in the gravity of Earth. One of the agents that perform operations with indefinite order is a quantum system in a path superposition state. Entanglement between its proper time and position is explored as a resource for the implementation of the quantum switch. The realization of the proposed protocol would probe the physical regime described by quantum mechanics on curved spacetimes, which has not yet been explored experimentally.
We study relativistic effects on polarised photons that travel in a curved spacetime. As a concrete application, we consider photons in the gravitational field of the Earth, on a closed path that starts at a terrestial laboratory, is reflected at one or more satellites, and finally returns to the laboratory. We find that the photons acquire a non-trivial Wigner phase already when the gravitational field is static, such as the Schwarzschild spacetime, where previous studies have found a trivial Wigner phase for closed photon paths. A gauge-invariant description of this nontrivial Wigner phase r…
Spacetime curvature of the Earth deforms wavepackets of photons sent from the Earth to satellites, thus influencing the quantum state of light. We show that Gaussian steering of photon pairs, which are initially prepared in a two-mode squeezed state, is affected by the curved spacetime background of the Earth. We demonstrate that quantum steerability of the state increases for a specific range of height $h$ and then gradually approaches a finite value with further increasing height of the satellite's orbit. Comparing with the peak frequency parameter, the Gaussian steering changes more for dif…
Non-relativistic particles that are effectively confined to two dimensions can in general move on curved surfaces, allowing dynamical phenomena beyond what can be described with scalar potentials or even vector gauge fields. Here we consider a simple case of piecewise uniform curvature: a particle moves on a plane with a spherical extrusion. Depending on the latitude at which the sphere joins the plane, the extrusion can range from an infinitesimal bump to a nearly full sphere that just touches the plane. Free classical motion on this surface of piecewise uniform curvature follows geodesics th…
We numerically compute renormalized expectation values of quadratic operators in a quantum field theory (QFT) of free Dirac fermions in curved two-dimensional (Lorentzian) spacetime. First, we use a staggered-fermion discretization to generate a sequence of lattice theories yielding the desired QFT in the continuum limit. Numerically-computed lattice correlators are then used to approximate, through extrapolation, those in the continuum. Finally, we use so-called point-splitting regularization and Hadamard renormalization to remove divergences, and thus obtain finite, renormalized expectation …
For quantum systems, we expect to see the classical behaviour at the limit of large quantum numbers. Hence, we apply Bohmian approach for describing the evolution of Earth around the Sun. We obtain possible trajectories of the Earth system with different initial conditions which converge to a certain stable orbit, known as the Kepler orbit, after a given time. The trajectories are resulted from the guiding equation $p=\nabla S$ in the Bohmian mechanics, which relates the momentum of the system to the phase part of the wave function. Except at some special situations, Bohmian trajectories are n…
We consider quantum communication schemes where quantum optical signals are exchanged between a source on Earth and a satellite. The background curved spacetime affects the quantum state of the propagating photons. We employ quantum-metrology techniques to obtain optimal bounds for the precision of quantum measurements of relevant physical parameters encoded in the final state. We focus on satellites in low Earth orbits and we find that our scheme improves the precision of the measurement of the Schwarzschild radius obtained within previous studies. Therefore, our techniques can provide the th…
A photon with a modulated wavefront can produce a quantum communication channel in a larger Hilbert space. For example, higher dimensional quantum key distribution (HD-QKD) can encode information in the transverse linear momentum (LM) or orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes of a photon. This is markedly different than using the intrinsic polarization of a photon. HD-QKD has advantages for free space QKD since it can increase the communication channelÕs tolerance to bit error rate (BER) while maintaining or increasing the channels bandwidth. We describe an efficient numerical simulation of the …
The Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) effect is analyzed for photons in a modified Mach-Zehnder setup with two particles experiencing different gravitational potentials, which are later recombined using a beam-splitter. It is found that the HOM effect depends directly on the relativistic time dilation between the arms of the setup. This temporal dilation can be used to estimate the $γ$ and $β$ parameters of the parameterized post-Newtonian formalism. The uncertainty in the parameters $γ$ and $β$ are of the order $ 10^{-8}-10^{-12}$, depending on the quantum state employed.
The appearance of a geometric flow in the conservation law of particle number in classical particle diffusion and in the conservation law of probability in quantum mechanics is discussed in the geometrical environment of a two-dimensional curved surface with thickness $ε$ embedded in $R_3$. In such a system with a small thickness $ε$, the usual two-dimensional conservation law does not hold and we find an anomaly. The anomalous term is obtained by the expansion of $ε$. We find that this term has a Gaussian and mean curvature dependence and can be written as the total divergence of some geometr…
The current race in quantum communication -- endeavouring to establish a global quantum network -- must account for special and general relativistic effects. The well-studied general relativistic effects include Shapiro time-delay, gravitational lensing, and frame dragging which all are due to how a mass distribution alters geodesics. Here, we report how the curvature of spacetime geometry affects the propagation of information carriers along an arbitrary geodesic. An explicit expression for the distortion onto the carrier wavefunction in terms of the Riemann curvature is obtained. Furthermore…
Motivated by quantum gravity, semi-classical theory, and quantum theory on curved spacetimes, we study the system of an oscillator coupled to two spin-1/2 particles. This model provides a prototype for comparing three types of dynamics: the full quantum theory, the classical oscillator with spin backreaction, and spins propagating on a fixed oscillator background. From nonperturbative calculations of oscillator and entanglement entropy dynamics, we find that entangled tripartite states produce novel oscillator trajectories, and that the three systems give equivalent dynamics for sufficiently w…
