We show that a dynamical spacetime generates entanglement between modes of a quantum field. Conversely, the entanglement encodes information concerning the underlying spacetime structure, which hints at the prospect of applications of this observation to cosmology. Here we illustrate this point by way of an analytically exactly soluble example, that of a scalar quantum field on a two-dimensional asymptotically flat Robertson-Walker expanding spacetime. We explicitly calculate the entanglement in the far future, for a quantum field residing in the vacuum state in the distant past. In this toy universe, it is possible to fully reconstruct the parameters of the cosmic history from the entanglement entropy.
We study the effect of space anisotropy in the entanglement generated by expanding universe on spin 0 and 1/2 fields. For massive scalar field we find revivals of entanglement entropy vs momentum after decreasing from the maximum at k = 0. In massive Dirac field the effect is a slight distortion of the non-monotonic profile giving rise to the maximum of entanglement entropy at k > 0. More interestingly, massless field of both type can only get entangled through anisotropy, with a maximum of entanglement entropy occurring at k > 0.
We study the evolution of the two scalar fields entangled via a mutual interaction in an expanding spacetime. We compute the logarithmic negativity to leading order in perturbation theory and show that for lowest order in the coupling constants, the mutual interaction will give rise to the survival of the quantum correlations in the limit of the smooth expansion. The results suggest that interacting fields can codify more information about the underlying expansion spacetime and lead to interesting observable effects.
We investigate entanglement of a quantum field in de Sitter spacetime using a particle detector model. By considering the entanglement between two comoving detectors interacting with a scalar field, it is possible to detect the entanglement of the scalar field by swapping it to detectors. For the massless minimal scalar field, we find that the entanglement between the detectors cannot be detected when their physical separation exceeds the Hubble horizon scale. This behavior supports the appearance of the classical nature of quantum fluctuations generated during the inflationary era.
We investigate the effects of spin on entanglement arising in Dirac field in an expanding spacetime characterized by the Robertson-Walker metric. We present a general approach that allows us to treat the case where only charge conservation is required, as well as the case where also angular momentum conservation is required. We fiend that in both situations entanglement, quantified by subsystem entropy, behaves the same and does not qualitatively deviates from the spinless case. Differences only arise when particles and/or antiparticles are present in the input state.
We study the role that both vacuum fluctuations and vacuum entanglement of a scalar field play in identifying the spacetime topology, which is not prescribed from first principles---neither in general relativity or quantum gravity. We analyze how the entanglement and observable correlations acquired between two particle detectors are sensitive to the spatial topology of spacetime. We examine the detector's time evolution to all orders in perturbation theory and then study the phenomenon of vacuum entanglement harvesting in Minkowski spacetime and two flat topologically distinct spacetimes cons…
In this work, we investigate how the anisotropy affects the cosmological parameters estimation. Here the anisotropy is incorporated as a small gravitational disturbance. We calculate the Fisher information for both cosmological parameters $ε$ (expansion volume) and $ρ$ (expansion rate), and we show that the anisotropy introduces oscillations in the Fisher information spectrum. This implies that the estimation of the cosmological parameters is sensible to the direction of the momentum $k$ of particles. In addition, we observe that for small values of the momentum $k$ there is a substantial diff…
We investigate the entanglement of a quantum field in the expanding universe. By introducing a bipartite system using a coarse-grained scalar field, we apply the separability criterion based on the partial transpose operation and numerically calculate the bipartite entanglement between separate spatial regions. We find that the initial entangled state becomes separable or dis-entangled after the spatial separation of two points exceed the Hubble horizon. This provides the necessary condition for the appearance of classicality of the quantum fluctuation. We also investigate the condition of cla…
We study, in the framework of open quantum systems, the entanglement generation between two mutually independent static two-level atoms in de Sitter spacetime. We treat the two-atom system as an open system in interaction with a bath of fluctuating conformally coupled massless scalar fields in the de Sitter invariant vacuum and derive the master equation which governs its evolution. With the help of the partial transposition criterion, we analyze entanglement generation between the two initially separable atoms and find that static atoms in de Sitter spacetime exhibit distinct characteristics …
We investigate an asymptotically spatially flat Robertson-Walker spacetime from two different perspectives. First, using von Neumann entropy, we evaluate the entanglement generation due to the encoded information in spacetime. Then, we work out the entropy of particle creation based on the quantum thermodynamics of the scalar field on the underlying spacetime. We show that the general behavior of both entropies are the same. Therefore, the entanglement can be applied to the customary quantum thermodynamics of the universe. Also, using these entropies, we can recover some information about the …
We study the entanglement generated between Dirac modes in a 2-dimensional conformally flat Robertson-Walker universe. We find radical qualitative differences between the bosonic and fermionic entanglement generated by the expansion. The particular way in which fermionic fields get entangled encodes more information about the underlying space-time than the bosonic case, thereby allowing us to reconstruct the parameters of the history of the expansion. This highlights the importance of bosonic/fermionic statistics to account for relativistic effects on the entanglement of quantum fields.
Pair particle creation is a well-known effect on the domain of field theory in curved space-time. It is shown that the entanglement generations for spin-0 and spin-1/2 modes are different in Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) space-time. We consider the spin-1 particles in FRW space-time using Duffin-Kemmer-Petiao (DKP) equation and obtain a measure of the generated entanglement. Also, we consider the spin-3/2 particles. We argue that the absolute value of the spin does not play any role in entanglement generation and the differences are due to the bosonic or fermionic properties.
We propose a holographic correspondence of the flat spacetime based on the behavior of the entanglement entropy and the correlation functions. The holographic dual theory turns out to be highly non-local. We argue that after most part of the space is traced out, the reduced density matrix gives the maximal entropy and the correlation functions become trivial. We present a toy model for this holographic dual using a non-local scalar field theory that reproduces the same property of the entanglement entropy. Our conjecture is consistent with the entropy of Schwarzschild black holes in asymptotic…
Most existing cosmological entanglement studies are focused on the isotropic Robertson-Walker (RW) spacetime. Here we go beyond this limitation and study the influence of anisotropy on entanglement generated by dynamical spacetime. Since the isotropic spacetime is viewed as a background medium and the anisotropy is incorporated as perturbation, we decompose entanglement entropy into isotropic and anisotropic contributions. The latter is shown to be non-negligible by analyzing two cosmological models with weak and conformal coupling. We also show the possibility of using entanglement to infer a…
We investigate a quantum teleportation process between two comoving observers Alice and Bob in an anisotropic expanding spacetime. In this model, we calculate the fidelity of teleportation and we noted an oscillation of its spectrum as a function of the azimuthal angle. We found that for the polar angle $ϕ= \fracπ{2}$ and the azimuthal angle $θ\neq \frac{3π}{4} + nπ$ with $n = 0, 1, 2, ...$ the efficiency of the process decreases, i.e., the fidelity is less than one. In addition, it is shown that the anisotropic effects on the fidelity becomes more significative in the regime of smooth expansi…
We introduce a framework for probing the spacetime structure of vacuum entanglement that exhibits infinite range correlations between the future and the past, as well as spatially separated regions. Our results are non-perturbative and analytical.
We consider an entanglement harvesting protocol between two Unruh-deWitt detectors in quantum superpositions of static trajectories in the static de Sitter and thermal Minkowski spacetimes. We demonstrate for the first time that the spatial superposition of each detector's path allows entanglement to be harvested from the quantum field in regimes where it would be otherwise impossible for detectors on classical trajectories. Surprisingly, for detectors on sufficiently delocalised trajectories in a thermal bath, the amount of harvested entanglement grows with the temperature of the field, viola…
In this note, we attempt to provide some insights into the structure of non-perturbative descriptions of quantum gravity using known examples of gauge-theory / gravity duality. We argue that in familiar examples, a quantum description of spacetime can be associated with a manifold-like structure in which particular patches of spacetime are associated with states or density matrices in specific quantum systems. We argue that quantum entanglement between microscopic degrees of freedom plays an essential role in the emergence of a dual spacetime from the nonperturbative degrees of freedom. In par…
We review recent results regarding entanglement in quantum fields in cosmological spacetimes and related phenomena in flat spacetime such as the Unruh effect. We being with a summary of important results about field entanglement and the mathematics of Bogoliubov transformations that is very often used to describe it. We then discuss the Unruh-DeWitt detector model, which is a useful model of a generic local particle detector. This detector model has been successfully used as a tool to obtain many important results. In this context we discuss two specific types of these detectors: a qubit and a…
In the framework of open quantum systems, we study the internal dynamics of both freely falling and static two-level atoms interacting with quantized conformally coupled massless scalar field in de Sitter spacetime. We find that the atomic transition rates depend on both the nature of de Sitter spacetime and the motion of atoms, interestingly the steady states for both cases are always driven to being purely thermal, regardless of the atomic initial states. This thermalization phenomenon is structurally similar to what happens to an elementary quantum system immersed in a thermal field, and th…
We investigate the degradation of quantum entanglement in the Schwarzschild-de Sitter black hole spacetime, by studying the mutual information and the logarithmic negativity for maximally entangled, bipartite states for massless minimal scalar fields. This spacetime is endowed with a black hole as well as a cosmological event horizon, giving rise to particle creation at two different temperatures. We consider two independent descriptions of thermodynamics and particle creation in this background. The first involves thermal equilibrium of an observer with either of the horizons. We show that as…
A possible causal solution to the problem of providing a spacetime description of the transmission of signals in quantum entangled states is described using a `bimetric' spacetime structure, in which the quantum entanglement measurements alter the structure of spacetime. Possible experimental tests to verify the suggested spacetime interpretation of quantum entangled states are proposed.
We study the entanglement between two modes of Dirac field in an expanding spacetime characterized by the Robertson-Walker metric. This spacetime model turns out to be asymptotically (in the remote past and far future regions) Minkowskian. Then, on the one hand we show entanglement creation between particles and anti-particles when passing from remote past to far future. On the other hand we show that particles entanglement in the remote past degrades into the far future. These effects are traced back to particles creation. In our analysis we highlight the role of spin (polarization) of partic…
We investigate the quantum estimation on the Hubble parameter of an expanding de Sitter space by quantum metrological techniques. By exploring the dynamics of a freely falling Unruh-DeWitt detector, which interacts with a scalar field coupling to curvature, we calculate the Fisher information (FI) and quantum Fisher information (QFI) for the detector, which bound the highest precision of the estimation on Hubble parameter. In standard Bunch-Davies vacuum, we show that the maxima of FI/QFI are located for particular initial state of probe. Beside its dependence on the evolving time of detector …
Cosmological Expansion Induces Interference Between Communication and Entanglement Harvesting
University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学）；Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo（滑铁卢大学量子计算研究所）；Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（理论物理前沿研究所）
There should be quantum vacuum fluctuations of spacetime itself, if we accept that the basic quantum principles we are already familiar with apply as well to a quantum theory of gravity. In this paper, we study, in linearized quantum gravity, the quantum entanglement generation at the neighborhood of the initial time between two independent gravitationally polarizable two-level subsystems caused by fluctuating quantum vacuum gravitational fields in the framework of open quantum systems. A bath of fluctuating quantum vacuum gravitational fields serves as an environment that provides indirect in…
We investigate two measures of quantum correlations and entanglement, namely the violation of the Bell-Mermin-Klyshko inequalities and the quantum discord, for Dirac fermions in the cosmological de Sitter background of dimension four. The BMK violation is focussed on the vacuum for two and four mode squeezed states and it is shown to increase with the number of modes. For the quantum discord, we investigate a maximally entangled in-vacuum state. Qualitative similarities as well as differences of our results with that of different coordinatisations of de Sitter in the context of scalar and ferm…
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.
We investigate the radiative processes of a quantum system composed by two identical two-level atoms in the de Sitter spacetime, interacting with a conformally coupled massless scalar field prepared in the de Sitter-invariant vacuum. We discuss the structure of the rate of variations of the atomic energy for two static atoms. Following a procedure developed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc and Cohen-Tannoudji, our intention is to identify in a quantitative way the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and the radiation reaction to the generation of quantum entanglement and to the degradation of entangle…
It is well-known that the $(1+1)$ dimensional Schwarzschild and spatially flat FLRW spacetimes are conformally flat. This work examines entanglement harvesting from the conformal field vacuums in these spacetimes between two Unruh-DeWitt detectors, moving along outgoing null trajectories. In $(1+1)$ dimensional Schwarzschild spacetime, we considered the Boulware and Unruh vacuums for our investigations. In this analysis, one observes that while entanglement harvesting is possible in $(1+1)$ dimensional Schwarzschild and $(1+3)$ dimensional de Sitter spacetimes, it is not possible in the $(1+1)…
Experiments witnessing the entanglement between two particles interacting only via the gravitational field have been proposed as a test whether gravity must be quantized. In the language of quantum information, a non-quantum gravitational force would be modeled by local operations with classical communication (LOCC), which cannot generate entanglement in an initially unentangled state. This idea is criticized as too constraining on possible alternatives to quantum gravity. We present a parametrized model for the gravitational interaction of quantum matter on a classical spacetime, inspired by …
We introduce an elementary optical gate for expanding polarization entangled W states, in which every pair of photons are entangled alike. The gate is composed of a pair of 50:50 beamsplitters and ancillary photons in the two-photon Fock state. By seeding one of the photons in an $n$-photon W state into this gate, we obtain an $(n+2)$-photon W state after post-selection. This gate gives a better efficiency and a simpler implementation than previous proposals for $\rm W$-state preparation.
We use the quantumcorrelation of both logarithmic negativity andmutual information between a qubit and a relativistic boson to analyze the dynamics of Universe expansion. These dynamical quantum correlations can encode the information about underlying spacetime structure, which suggests a promising application in observational cosmology. We find that the dynamics of both logarithmic negativity and mutual information between the qubit and the boson are very similar. They decrease monotonically with the growth of the expansion volume and the expansion rate. Smaller momentum and medium-sized mass…
We investigate entanglement dynamics for two atoms coupling with fluctuating electromagnetic field in the cosmic string spacetime. We calculate the entanglement for different conditions. It is found that the entanglement behaviors are dependent on vacuum fluctuation, spacetime topology, two-atom separation and atomic polarization orientation. After a long time of evolution, entanglement would vanish, which means entanglement affected by electromagnetic fluctuation can not maintain for a long time. For different spacetime topologies, entanglement presents different behaviors dependent on variou…
We investigate quantum entanglement between two symmetric spatialregions in de Sitter space with the Bunch-Davies vacuum. As a discretized model of the scalar field for numerical simulation, we consider a harmonic chain model. Using the coarse-grained variables for the scalar field, it is shown that the multipartite entanglement on the superhorizon scale exists by checking the monogamy relation for the negativity which quantifies the entanglement between the two regions. Further, we consider the continuous limit of this model without coarse-graining and find that non-zero values of the logarit…
We study the properties of quantum entanglement and teleportation in the background of stationary and rotating curved space-times with extra dimensions. We show that a maximally entangled Bell state in an inertial frame becomes less entangled in curved space due to the well-known Hawking-Unruh effect. The degree of entanglement is found to be degraded with increasing the extra dimensions. For a finite black hole surface gravity, the observer may choose higher frequency mode to keep high level entanglement. The fidelity of quantum teleporation is also reduced because of the Hawking-Unruh effect…
We give an upper bound of the relative entanglement entropy of the ground state of a massive Dirac-Majorana field across two widely separated regions $A$ and $B$ in a static slice of an ultrastatic Lorentzian spacetime. Our bound decays exponentially in $dist (A, B)$, at a rate set by the Compton wavelength and the spatial scalar curvature. The physical interpretation our result is that, on a manifold with positive spatial scalar curvature, one cannot use the entanglement of the vacuum state to teleport one classical bit from $A$ to $B$ if their distance is of the order of the maximum of the c…
We study quantum effects in the presence of a spherical semi-transparent mirror or a system of two concentric mirrors which expand with a constant acceleration in a flat D-dimensional spacetime. Using the Euclidean approach, we obtain expressions for fluctuations and the renormalized value of stress-energy tensor for a scalar non-minimally coupled massless field. Explicit expressions are obtained for the energy fluxes at the null infinity generated by such mirrors in the physical spacetime and their properties are discussed.
We elaborate on our earlier proposal connecting entanglement renormalization and holographic duality in which we argued that a tensor network can be reinterpreted as a kind of skeleton for an emergent holographic space. Here we address the question of the large $N$ limit where on the holographic side the gravity theory becomes classical and a non-fluctuating smooth spacetime description emerges. We show how a number of features of holographic duality in the large $N$ limit emerge naturally from entanglement renormalization, including a classical spacetime generated by entanglement, a sparse sp…
We apply the master equation with dynamical coarse graining approximation to a pair of detectors interacting with a scalar field. By solving the master equation numerically, we investigate evolution of negativity between comoving detectors in de Sitter space. For the massless conformal scalar field, it is found that a pair of detectors can perceive entanglement beyond the Hubble horizon scale if the initial separation of detectors is sufficiently small. At the same time, violation of the Bell-CHSH inequality on the super horizon scale is also detected. For the massless minimal scalar field, on…
We investigate the effects of relative motion on entanglement harvesting by considering a pair of Unruh-Dewitt detectors moving at arbitrary, but independent and constant velocities, both linearly interacting with the vacuum scalar field. Working within the weak coupling approximation, we find that the Negativity is a (non-elementary) function of the relative velocity of the detectors, as well as their energy gaps and minimal separation. We find parameter regions where Negativity increases with velocity up to a maximum and then decreases, reaching zero at some sublight velocity. At any given r…
We show that entanglement can be used to detect spacetime curvature. Quantum fields in the Minkowski vacuum are entangled with respect to local field modes. This entanglement can be swapped to spatially separated quantum systems using standard local couplings. A single, inertial field detector in the exponentially expanding (de Sitter) vacuum responds as if it were bathed in thermal radiation in a Minkowski universe. We show that using two inertial detectors, interactions with the field in the thermal case will entangle certain detector pairs that would not become entangled in the correspondin…
