Moving Charges, Detectors, and Mirrors in a Quantum Field with Backreaction
Chad R. Galley, B. L. Hu, Philip R. Johnson
备注：
To appear in the proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Quantum Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions, Oklahoma City, Sept. 2003. Proceedings edited by Kimball Milton (Rinton Press, 2004}
This is a progress report on our current work on moving charges, detectors, and moving mirrors in a quantum field treated in a fully relativistic way via the Feynman-Vernon influence functional method, which preserves maximal quantum coherence of the system with self-consistent back-reaction from the field.
We propose a theoretical scheme for atomic cooling, i.e. the compression of both velocity and position distribution of particles in motion. This is achieved by collisions of the particles with a combination of a moving atomic mirror and a moving atom diode. An atom diode is a unidirectional barrier, i.e. an optical device through which an atom can pass in one direction only. We show that the efficiency of the scheme depends on the trajectory of the diode and the mirror. We examine both the classical and quantum mechanical descriptions of the scheme, along with the numerical simulations to show…
We investigate the effect of time-dependent boundary conditions on the dynamics of a quantum bouncer -- a particle falling in a homogeneous gravitational field on a moving mirror. We examine more particularly the way a moving mirror modifies the properties of the entire wavefunction of a falling particle. We find that some effects, such as the fact that a quantum particle hitting a moving mirror may bounce significantly higher than when the mirror is fixed, are in line with classical intuition. Other effects, such as the change in relative phases or in the current density in spatial regions ar…
We find the quantum power emitted and distribution in $3+1$-dimensions of relativistic acceleration radiation using a single perfectly reflecting mirror via Lorentz invariance demonstrating close analogies to point charge radiation in classical electrodynamics.
We analyze the flow of energy and entropy emitted by a class of moving mirror trajectories which provide models for the radiation fields produced by black hole evaporation. The mirror radiation fields provide natural, concrete examples of processes that follow thermal distributions for long periods, accompanied by transients which are brief and carry little net energy, yet they ultimately represent pure quantum states. A burst of negative energy flux is a generic feature of these fields, but it need not be prominent.
We study a quantum model of dynamical Casimir effect in an optical cavity enclosed by a freely moving mirror attached to a harmonic spring. The quantum fluctuations of the friction force exerted by the dynamical Casimir emission onto the moving mirror are investigated, as well as their consequences on the quantum state of the mirror oscillation. Observable signatures of the interplay of the nonlinear nature of the effective mirror-cavity coupling and of the discreteness of the emitted photons are pointed out, in particular as a fast diffusion of the mirror oscillation phase. These results are …
Light reflection on a mirror can be thought as a simple physical effect. However if this happens when the mirror moves a rich scenario opens up. Here we aim at analyzing it from a quantum communication perspective. In particular, we study the kind of quantum channel that arises from (Gaussian) light reflection upon an accelerating mirror. Two competing mechanisms emerge in such a context, namely photons production by the mirror's motion and {\blu interference between modes}. As consequence we find out a quantum amplifier channel and quantum lossy channel respectively below and above a threshol…
We consider an atom (represented by a two-level system) moving in front of a dielectric plate, and study how traces of dissipation and decoherence (both effects induced by vacuum field fluctuations) can be found in the corrections to the unitary geometric phase accumulated by the atom. We consider the particle to follow a classical, macroscopically-fixed trajectory and integrate over the vacuum field and the microscopic degrees of freedom of both the plate and the particle in order to calculate friction effects. We compute analytically and numerically the non-unitary geometric phase for the mo…
We study the phenomenon of entanglement extraction from the vacuum of a massless scalar field in $(1+1)$ dimensional spacetime in presence of a moving Dirichlet boundary condition, i.e. mirror spacetime, using two inertial Unruh-DeWitt detectors. We consider a variety of non-trivial trajectories for these accelerating mirrors and find (1) an entanglement inhibition phenomenon similar to that recently seen for black holes, as well as (2) trajectory-independent entanglement enhancement in some regimes. We show that the qualitative result obtained is the same for both linear and derivative coupli…
We analyze the classical dynamics of a system composed of a one-dimensional cavity with a perfect, fixed mirror and a movable mirror with non-zero transparency interacting with a monochromatic laser. The movable mirror can deviate far from an equilibrium position, it is assumed to be thin so that it is modelled by a delta function, and we use the exact modes of the complete system. The transparency and the mirror-position dependent cavity resonance frequencies are built into the modes and this allows us to deduce that the radiation pressure force comes from a periodic potential with period hal…
In the information loss problem in black hole evaporation, investigation of the purification partner of a Hawking particle is crucial. It is a well-known fact that 3+1 dimensional spherically symmetric gravitational collapse can be approximately described by 1+1 dimensional moving mirror models. Since a detected particle in field theory is defined by what a particle detector observes, the diversity of detector designs yields a variety of particles and their partners. We provide a formula of generalized partners of detected particles emitted out of mirrors in arbitrary motion in a free massless…
Shortcuts to adiabaticity constitute a powerful alternative that speed up time-evolution while mimicking adiabatic dynamics. They are also relevant to clarify fundamental questions such as a precise quantification of the third principle of thermodynamics and quantum speed limits. In this letter we describe, for the first time, how to implement shortcuts to adiabaticity in quantum field theory, for the particular case of a massless scalar field inside a cavity with a moving wall, in 1 + 1 dimensions. The approach is based on the known solution to the problem that exploits the conformal symmetry…
We study photon creation in a cavity with two perfectly conducting moving mirrors. We derive the dynamic equations of the modes and study different situations concerning various movements of the walls, such as translational or breathing modes. We can even apply our approach to one or three dimensional cavities and reobtain well known results of cavities with one moving mirror. We compare the numerical results with analytical predictions and discuss the effects of the intermode coupling in detail as well as the non perturbative regime. We also study the time evolution of the energy density as w…
The partner mode with respect to a vacuum state for a given mode (like that corresponding to one of the thermal particles emitted by a black hole) is defined and calculated. The partner modes are explicitly calculated for a number of cases, in particular for the modes corresponding to a particle detector being excited by turn-on/turn-off transients, or with the thermal particles emitted by the accelerated mirror model for black hole evaporation. One of the key results is that the partner mode in general is just a vacuum fluctuation, and one can have the partner mode be located in a region wher…
We calculate the spectrum and the total rate of created particles for a real massless scalar field in $1+1$ dimensions, in the presence of a partially transparent moving mirror simulated by a Dirac $δ-δ^{\prime}$ point interaction. We show that, for this model, a partially reflecting mirror can produce a larger number of particles in comparison with a perfect one. In the limit of a perfect mirror, our formulas recover those found in the literature for the particle creation by a moving mirror with a Robin boundary condition.
Constructing an exact correspondence between a black hole model, formed from the most simple solution of Einstein's equations, and a particular moving mirror trajectory, we investigate a new model that preserves unitarity. The Bogoliubov coefficients in 1+1 dimensions are computed analytically. The key modification limits the origin of coordinates (moving mirror) to sub-light asymptotic speed. Effective continuity across the metric ensures that there is no information loss. The black hole emits thermal radiation and the total evaporation energy emitted is finite without backreaction, consisten…
We present a scheme for cavity-assisted generation of hybrid entanglement between a moving mirror belonging to an optomechanical cavity and a single trapped ion located inside a second cavity. Due to radiation pressure, it is possible to entangle the moving mirror with one of the cavity fields. Also, by tuning the second cavity field with the internal degrees of freedom of the ion, an entangled state of the cavity field/ion can be independently generated. The fields leaking from each cavity are then combined in a beam-splitter, and following the detection of the outgoing photons by convenientl…
We consider a system composed of a mobile slab and the electromagnetic field. We assume that the slab is made of a material that has the following properties when it is at rest: it is linear, isotropic, non-magnetizable, and ohmic with zero free charge density. Using instantaneous Lorentz transformations, we deduce the set of self-consistent equations governing the dynamics of the system and we obtain approximate equations to first order in the velocity and the acceleration of the slab. As a consequence of the motion of the slab, the field must satisfy a wave equation with damping and slowly v…
The vacuum radiation of a massive scalar field is studied by means of a single moving mirror. The field equation with an arbitrary-shaped mirror moving in $(d+1)$ dimensions is given perturbatively in the non-relativistic limit. Explicit results are obtained for a flat mirror moving in $(1+1)$ dimensions and $(3+1)$ dimensions. The vacuum radiation power and vacuum friction force on the mirror are given in $(1+1)$ dimensions. The intrinsic mass of the field is found to suppress the vacuum radiation. In $(3+1)$ dimensions, the modification of the frequency spectra and angular spectra of emitted…
We evaluate the probability of (de-)excitation and photon emission from a neutral, moving, non-relativistic atom, coupled to the quantum electromagnetic field and in the presence of a thin, perfectly conducting plane ("mirror"). These results extend, to a more realistic model, the ones we had presented for a scalar model, where the would-be electron was described by a scalar variable, coupled to an (also scalar) vacuum field. The latter was subjected to either Dirichlet or Neumann conditions on a plane. In our evaluation of the spontaneous emission rate produced when the accelerated atom is in…
