Radiation from a mirror moving in vacuum electromagnetic fields is shown to vanish in the case of a uniformly accelerated motion. Such motions are related to conformal coordinate transformations, which preserve correlation functions characteristic of vacuum fluctuations. As a result, vacuum fluctuations remain invariant under reflection upon a uniformly accelerated mirror, which therefore does not radiate and experiences no radiation reaction force. Mechanical effects of vacuum fluctuations thus exhibit an invariance with respect to uniformly accelerated motions.
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.
The analysis of uniformly longitudinally extended detector is performed and it is shown that the response of such a detector does not differ from the response of the Unruh detector, but the its excitation is caused not by the thermal bath, but by interaction with the fluctuations of the quantum field by virtual quanta.
A detector undergoing uniform acceleration $a$ in a vacuum field responds just as though it were immersed in thermal radiation of temperature $T=\hbar a/2πk c$. A simple, intuitive derivation of this result is given for the case of a scalar field in one spatial dimension. The approach is then extended to treat the case where the field seen by the accelerated observer is a spin-1/2 Dirac field.
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…
We discuss different physical effects related to the uniform acceleration of atoms in vacuum, in the framework of quantum electrodynamics. We first investigate the van der Waals/Casimir-Polder dispersion and resonance interactions between two uniformly accelerated atoms in vacuum. We show that the atomic acceleration significantly affects the van der Waals force, yielding a different scaling of the interaction with the interatomic distance and an explicit time dependence of the interaction energy. We argue how these results could allow for an indirect detection of the Unruh effect through disp…
We study the accelerated motion of mirrors and the photonic Unruh effect. The solutions of Maxwell's equations with appropriate boundary conditions in Rindler coordinates are found. The canonical quantization of the field is carried out properly. Important consequences arise from the presence of mirrors or polarizers. It is shown that a single reflective surface produces frequency quantization due to Dirichlet conditions applied to the $-1/(αx)^2$ anomalous potential for non-inertial observers. The number of photons per accelerated mode is estimated via Hankel functions.
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 consider a pair of two-level Unruh-DeWitt detectors accelerated uniformly in the Minkowski vacuum of a massless neutral scalar field, and analyze, within the perturbation theory, the entanglement extracted from the vacuum into the Unruh-DeWitt detectors when the switching of the detectors are performed adiabatically enough at the asymptotic past and future. We consider the cases where the detectors are accelerated parallelly, anti-parallelly, and in differently orientated directions. We show that entanglement is extracted if they are accelerated anti-parallelly and the ratios of the excitat…
It is shown that accelerated projective measurements on the vacuum of a free Dirac spinor field results in an entangled state for an inertial observer. The physical mechanism at work is the Davies-Unruh effect. The produced state is always entangled and its entanglement increases as a function of the acceleration, reaching maximal entanglement in the asymptotic limit of infinite acceleration where Bell states are produced.
We study the spontaneous excitation of a uniformly accelerated two-level atom non-linearly coupled with vacuum Dirac field fluctuations using the formalism proposed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc and Cohen-Tannoudji (DDC) and generalized to the present case in the current paper. We find that a cross term involving both vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction appears, which is absent in the linear coupling cases such as an atom interacting with vacuum scalar or electromagnetic fluctuations. Furthermore, the contribution of this term actually dominates over that of radiation reaction. Thus, the mean…
We investigate, in the framework of open quantum systems, the entanglement dynamics of two circularly accelerated two-level atoms with the same centripetal acceleration interacting with a bath of fluctuating electromagnetic fields in the Minkowski vacuum. We assume that the two atoms rotate synchronically with their separation perpendicular to the rotating plane, and study the entanglement degradation, creation, revival, and enhancement by solving the Markovian master equation. In contrast to the scalar-field case, the entanglement dynamics is crucially dependent on the atomic polarizations in…
We study, in the multipolar coupling scheme, a uniformly accelerated multilevel hydrogen atom in interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field near a conducting boundary and separately calculate the contributions of the vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the mean atomic energy. It is found that the perfect balance between the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction that ensures the stability of ground-state atoms is disturbed, making spontaneous transition of ground-state atoms to excited states possible in vacuum with a conducting bound…
We study, in the framework of open systems, the entanglement generation of two independent uniformly accelerated atoms in interaction with the vacuum fluctuations of massless scalar fields subjected to a reflecting plane boundary. We demonstrate that, with the presence of the boundary, the accelerated atoms exhibit distinct features from static ones in a thermal bath at the corresponding Unruh temperature in terms of the entanglement creation at the neighborhood of the initial time. In this sense, accelerated atoms in vacuum do not necessarily have to behave as if they were static in a thermal…
We consider a multilevel hydrogen atom in interaction with the quantum electromagnetic field and separately calculate the contributions of the vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction to the rate of change of the mean atomic energy of the atom for uniform acceleration. It is found that the acceleration disturbs the vacuum fluctuations in such a way that the delicate balance between the contributions of vacuum fluctuation and radiation reaction that exists for inertial atoms is broken, so that the transitions to higher-lying states from ground state are possible even in vacuum. In contrast to …
Positive frequency Wightman function and vacuum expectation values of the energy-momentum tensor are computed for a massive scalar field with general curvature coupling parameter and satisfying Robin boundary condition on a uniformly accelerated infinite plate. The both regions of the right Rindler wedge, (i) on the right (RR region) and (ii) on the left (RL region) of the plate are investigated. For the case (ii) the electromagnetic field is considered as well. The mode summation method is used with combination of a variant of the generalized Abel-Plana formula. This allows to present the exp…
Quantum fields possess zero-point or vacuum fluctuations which induce mechanical effects, namely generalised Casimir forces, on any scatterer. Symmetries of vacuum therefore raise fundamental questions when confronted with the principle of relativity of motion in vacuum. The specific case of uniformly accelerated motion is particularly interesting, in connection with the much debated question of the appearance of vacuum in accelerated frames. The choice of Rindler representation, commonly used in General Relativity, transforms vacuum fluctuations into thermal fluctuations, raising difficulties…
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…
It has been proved in the context of quantum fields in Minkowski spacetime that the vacuum state is a thermal state according to uniformly accelerated observers -- a seminal result known as the Unruh effect. Recent claims, however, have challenged the validity of this result for extended systems, thus casting doubts on its physical reality. Here, we study the dynamics of an extended system, uniformly accelerated in the vacuum. We show that its reduced density matrix evolves to a Gibbs thermal state with local temperature given by the Unruh temperature. This proves that the vacuum state does in…
The generators of radial conformal symmetries in Minkowski space-time can be mapped to the generators of time evolution in conformal quantum mechanics. Within this correspondence we show that in conformal quantum mechanics the state associated to the inertial vacuum in Minkowski space-time has the structure of a thermofield double. Such state is built from a bipartite "vacuum state", the ground state of the generators of hyperbolic time evolution, which cover only part of the time domain. When time evolution is restricted to a finite time domain one obtains the temperature perceived by static …
We study the resonance interaction between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, one excited and the other in the ground state, prepared in a correlated (symmetric or antisymmetric) state and interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state. In this case (resonance interaction), the interatomic interaction is a second-order effect in the atom-field coupling. We separate the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the resonance energy shift of the system, and show that only radiation reaction contributes, while Unruh thermal fluctuat…
In this work we discuss the process of measurements by a detector in an uniformly accelerated rectilinear motion, interacting linearly with a massive scalar field. The detector model for field quanta is a point-like system with a ground state and a continuum of unbounded states. We employ the Glauber theory of photodetection. In an uniformly accelerated reference frame, the detector, interacting with the field prepared in an arbitrary state of the Rindler Fock space, is excited only by absorption processes. For the uniformly accelerated detector prepared in the ground state, we evaluate the tr…
The vacuum expectation value of the surface energy-momentum tensor is evaluated for a massless scalar field obeying mixed boundary condition on an infinite plate moving by uniform proper acceleration through the Fulling-Rindler vacuum. The generalized zeta function technique is used, in combination with the contour integral representation. The surface energies for separate regions on the left and on the right of the plate contain pole and finite contributions. Analytic expressions for both these contributions are derived. For a minimally coupled scalar the surface energy-momentum tensor induce…
We study, in the paradigm of open quantum systems, the entanglement dynamics of two uniformly accelerated atoms with the same acceleration perpendicular to the separation. The two-atom system is treated as an open system coupled with a bath of fluctuating massless scalar fields in the Minkowski vacuum, and the master equation that governs its evolution is derived. It has been found that, for accelerated atoms with a nonvanishing separation, entanglement sudden death is a general feature when the initial state is entangled, while for those in a separable initial state, entanglement sudden birth…
We investigate the resonance interaction energy between two uniformly accelerated identical atoms, interacting with the scalar field or the electromagnetic field in the vacuum state, in the reference frame coaccelerating with the atoms. We assume that one atom is excited and the other in the ground state, and that they are prepared in their correlated symmetric or antisymmetric state. Using perturbation theory, we separate, at the second order in the atom-field coupling, the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction field to the energy shift of the interacting system. We show…
We investigate the interaction between a moving detector and a quantum field, especially about how the trajectory of the detector would affect the vacuum fluctuations when the detector is moves in a quantum field (the Unruh effect). We focus on two moving detectors system for future application in quantum teleportation. We find that the rajectory of a uniformly accelerated detector in Rindler space cannot be extended to a trajectory in which a detector moves at constant velocity. Based on our previous work, we redo the calculations and find that a term is missing from the past calculations, an…
We review some quantum electrodynamical effects related to the uniform acceleration of atoms in vacuum. After discussing the energy level shifts of a uniformly accelerated atom in vacuum, we investigate the atom-wall Casimir-Polder force for accelerated atoms, and the van der Waals/Casimir-Polder interaction between two accelerated atoms. The possibility of detecting the Unruh effect through these phenomena is also discussed in detail.
The structure of the rate of variation of the atomic energy for an arbitrary stationary motion of the atom in interaction with a quantum electromagnetic field is investigated. Our main purpose is to rewrite the formalism in Ref. \cite{zz} and to deduce the general expressions of the Einstein A coefficients of an atom on an arbitrary stationary trajectory. The total rate of change of the energy and Einstein coefficients of the atom near a plate with finite temperature or acceleration are also investigated.
We revisit the Unruh effect to investigate how finite acceleration would affect a scalar condensate. We discuss a negative thermal-like correction associated with acceleration. From the correspondence between thermo-field dynamics and acceleration effects we give an explanation for this negative sign. Using this result and solving the gap equation we show that the condensate should increase with larger acceleration.
In this paper we analyze the interaction of a uniformly accelerated detector with a quantum field in (3+1)D spacetime, aiming at the issue of how kinematics can render vacuum fluctuations the appearance of thermal radiance in the detector (Unruh effect) and how they engender flux of radiation for observers afar. Two basic questions are addressed in this study: a) How are vacuum fluctuations related to the emitted radiation? b) Is there emitted radiation with energy flux in the Unruh effect? We adopt a method which places the detector and the field on an equal footing and derive the two-point c…
A direct consequence of quantization of gravity would be quantum gravitational vacuum fluctuations which induce quadrupole moments in gravitationally polarizable atoms. In this paper, we study the spontaneous excitation of a gravitationally polarizable atom with a uniform acceleration $a$ in interaction with a bath of fluctuating quantum gravitational fields in vacuum, and compare the result with that of a static one in a thermal bath of gravitons at the Unruh temperature. We find that, under the fluctuations of spacetime itself, transitions to higher-lying excited states from the ground state…
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)…
It is shown that the Unruh effect, i.e. the increase in temperature indicated by a uniformly accelerated thermometer in an inertial vacuum state of a quantum field, cannot be interpreted as the result of an exchange of heat with a surrounding gas. Since the vacuum is spatially homogeneous in the accelerated system its temperature must be zero everywhere as a consequence of Tolman's law. In fact, the increase of temperature of accelerated thermometers is due to systematic quantum effects induced by the local coupling between the thermometer and the vacuum. This coupling inevitably creates excit…
We study dissipative effects due to inertial forces acting on matter fields confined to accelerated boundaries in $1+1$, $2+1$, and $3+1$ dimensions. These matter fields describe the internal degrees of freedom of `mirrors' and impose, on the surfaces where they are defined, boundary conditions on a fluctuating `vacuum' field. We construct different models, involving either scalar or Dirac matter fields coupled to a vacuum scalar field, and use effective action techniques to calculate the strength of dissipation. In the case of massless Dirac fields, the results could be used to describe the i…
Didactic heuristic arguments, based on the quantum mechanics of the vacuum and the structure of spacetime, are reviewed concerning particle creation from the vacuum by an electric field, vacuum radiation in an accelerated frame, black-hole radiation, minimum-mass black holes, spacetime breakdown, maximal proper acceleration, the spacetime tangent bundle, and intrinsic Planck-scale regularization of quantum fields.
We investigate the problem of metric fluctuations in the presence of the vacuum fluctuations of matter fields and critically assess the usual assertion that vacuum energy implies a Planckian cosmological constant. A new stochastic classical approach to the quantum fluctuations of spacetime is developed. The work extends conceptually Boyer's random electrodynamics to a theory of random gravity but has a considerably richer structure for inheriting nonlinearity from general relativity. Attention is drawn to subtleties in choosing boundary conditions for metric fluctuations in relation to their d…
We study radiative processes of uniformly accelerated entangled atoms, interacting with an electromagnetic field prepared in the Minkowski vacuum state. We discuss the structure of the rate of variation of the atomic energy for two atoms travelling in different hyperbolic world lines. We identify the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and radiation reaction to the generation of entanglement as well as to the decay of entangled states. Our results resemble the situation in which two inertial atoms are coupled individually to two spatially separated cavities at different temperatures. In addit…
We make a detailed comparison between entanglement harvesting for uniformly accelerated detectors in vacuum and static ones in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature and find that, for a small energy gap relative to the Heisenberg energy of the detectors, static detectors in the thermal bath can harvest more entanglement and possess a comparatively larger harvesting-achievable range than the uniformly accelerated ones; however, as the energy gap grows sufficiently large, the uniformly accelerated detectors are instead likely to harvest more entanglement and possess a relatively larger harvest…
