Alice falls into a black hole: Entanglement in non-inertial frames

Two observers determine the entanglement between two free bosonic modes by each detecting one of the modes and observing the correlations between their measurements. We show that a state which is maximally entangled in an inertial frame becomes less entangled if the observers are relatively accelerated. This phenomenon, which is a consequence of the Unruh effect, shows that entanglement is an observer-dependent quantity in non-inertial frames. In the high acceleration limit, our results can be applied to a non-accelerated observer falling into a black hole while the accelerated one barely escapes. If the observer escapes with infinite acceleration, the state's distillable entanglement vanishes.Comment: I.F-S published before with maiden name Fuentes-Guridi Replaced with published version. Phys. Rev. Lett. in pres

Entanglement of Dirac fields in non-inertial frames

We analyze the entanglement between two modes of a free Dirac field as seen by two relatively accelerated parties. The entanglement is degraded by the Unruh effect and asymptotically reaches a non-vanishing minimum value in the infinite acceleration limit. This means that the state always remains entangled to a degree and can be used in quantum information tasks, such as teleportation, between parties in relative uniform acceleration. We analyze our results from the point of view afforded by the phenomenon of entanglement sharing and in terms of recent results in the area of multi-qubit complementarity.Comment: 15 pages, with 8 figures (Mar 2006); accepted to Physical Review A, July 2006 - slightly revise

Degradation of non-maximal entanglement of scalar and Dirac fields in non-inertial frames

The entanglement between two modes of the free scalar and Dirac fields as seen by two relatively accelerated observers has been investigated. It is found that the same initial entanglement for an initial state parameter $\alpha$ and its "normalized partner" $\sqrt{1-\alpha^{2}}$ will be degraded by the Unruh effect along two different trajectories except for the maximally entangled state, which just shows the inequivalence of the quantization for a free field in the Minkowski and Rindler coordinates. In the infinite acceleration limit the state doesn't have the distillable entanglement for any $\alpha$ for the scalar field but always remains entangled to a degree which is dependent of $\alpha$ for the Dirac field. It is also interesting to note that in this limit the mutual information equals to just half of the initially mutual information, which is independent of $\alpha$ and the type of field.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Speeding up Entanglement Degradation

Entanglement between two free bosonic modes can be determined via detection of each mode by different observers and then observing the correlations between their measurements. We show that such entanglement is degraded as a function of time if one observer begins in a state of inertial motion but ends in a state of uniform acceleration while the other remains inertial. At late times we recover previously established results for observers in relative uniform acceleration.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Bures distance between two displaced thermal states

The Bures distance between two displaced thermal states and the corresponding geometric quantities (statistical metric, volume element, scalar curvature) are computed. Under nonunitary (dissipative) dynamics, the statistical distance shows the same general features previously reported in the literature by Braunstein and Milburn for two--state systems. The scalar curvature turns out to have new interesting properties when compared to the curvature associated with squeezed thermal states.Comment: 3 pages, RevTeX, no figure

Hawking radiation, Entanglement and Teleportation in background of an asymptotically flat static black hole

The effect of the Hawking temperature on the entanglement and teleportation for the scalar field in a most general, static and asymptotically flat black hole with spherical symmetry has been investigated. It is shown that the same "initial entanglement" for the state parameter $\alpha$ and its "normalized partners" $\sqrt{1-\alpha^{2}}$ will be degraded by the Hawking effect with increasing Hawking temperature along two different trajectories except for the maximally entangled state. In the infinite Hawking temperature limit, corresponding to the case of the black hole evaporating completely, the state has no longer distillable entanglement for any $\alpha$. It is interesting to note that the mutual information in this limit equals to just half of the "initially mutual information". It has also been demonstrated that the fidelity of teleportation decreases as the Hawking temperature increases, which just indicates the degradation of entanglement.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Physical Review

The Rotating-Wave Approximation: Consistency and Applicability from an Open Quantum System Analysis

We provide an in-depth and thorough treatment of the validity of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) in an open quantum system. We find that when it is introduced after tracing out the environment, all timescales of the open system are correctly reproduced, but the details of the quantum state may not be. The RWA made before the trace is more problematic: it results in incorrect values for environmentally-induced shifts to system frequencies, and the resulting theory has no Markovian limit. We point out that great care must be taken when coupling two open systems together under the RWA. Though the RWA can yield a master equation of Lindblad form similar to what one might get in the Markovian limit with white noise, the master equation for the two coupled systems is not a simple combination of the master equation for each system, as is possible in the Markovian limit. Such a naive combination yields inaccurate dynamics. To obtain the correct master equation for the composite system a proper consideration of the non-Markovian dynamics is required.Comment: 17 pages, 0 figures