Minkowski vacuum entanglement and accelerated oscillator chains
Minkowski vacuum is empty from the perspective of Unruh-Minkowski photons, however, in the Rindler picture, it is filled with entangled pairs of Rindler photons. A ground-state atom uniformly accelerated through Minkowski vacuum can become excited by absorbing a Rindler photon (Unruh effect) or, in the alternative description, by emitting an Unruh-Minkowski photon (Unruh-Wald effect). We find an exact solution for the quantum evolution of a long chain of harmonic oscillators accelerated through Minkowski vacuum and for two chains accelerated in the opposite directions. We show how entanglement of Rindler photons present in Minkowski vacuum is transferred to the oscillators moving in causally disconnected regions. We also show that in the Unruh-Minkowski photon picture the process can be interpreted as if initial correlations between collective oscillator modes are transferred to the generated Unruh-Minkowski photons.
Authors
- Marlan O. Scully (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6397-4927)
- W. G. Unruh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7393-0482)
- Anatoly A. Svidzinsky (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4775-6767)
Institutions
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Baylor University (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- Mitchell Institute (US)
- Texas A&M University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. D/Physical review. D.
- Published
- 2025-02-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.111.045022
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 3.74
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Welch Foundation
- Hagler Institute for Advanced Study, Texas A&M University
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research