PIRSA:12060074

Boundary Effects on Quantum Entanglement and its Dynamics in a Detector-Field System

(2012). Boundary Effects on Quantum Entanglement and its Dynamics in a Detector-Field System. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/12060074

Boundary Effects on Quantum Entanglement and its Dynamics in a Detector-Field System. Perimeter Institute, Jun. 25, 2012, https://pirsa.org/12060074 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:12060074,
            doi = {10.48660/12060074},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/12060074},
            author = {},
            keywords = {},
            language = {en},
            title = {Boundary Effects on Quantum Entanglement and its Dynamics in a Detector-Field System},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2012},
            month = {jun},
            note = {PIRSA:12060074 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }
Talk number
PIRSA:12060074
Collection
Talk Type
Abstract
We analyze an exactly solvable model consisting of an inertial Unruh-DeWitt detector which interacts linearly with a massless quantum field in Minkowski spacetime with a perfectly reflecting flat plane boundary. This model is related to proposed mirror-field superposition and relevant experiments in macroscopic quantum phenomena, as well as atomic fluctuation forces near a conducting surface. Firstly a coupled set of equations for the detector’s and the field’s Heisenberg operators are derived. After coarse graining the field, the dynamics of the detector’s internal degreeof freedom is described by a quantum Langevin equation, where the dissipation and noise kernels respectively correspond to the retarded Green’s functions and Hadamard elementary functions of the free quantum field in half space. We use the linear entropy as measures of entanglement between the detector and the quantum field under mirror reflection, then solve the early-time detector-fieldentanglement dynamics. At late times when the combined system is in a stationary state, we obtain exact expressions for the detector’s covariance matrix and show that the detector-field entanglement decreases for smaller separation between the detector and the mirror.We explain the behavior of detector-field entanglement qualitatively with the help of a detector’s mirror image, compare them with the case of two real detectors and explain the differences.