Decoherence as a detector of the Unruh effect
Alexander I. Nesterov, Manuel A. Rodríguez Fernández, Gennady P. Berman, Xidi Wang
Abstract
We propose a type of the Unruh-DeWitt detector which measures the decoherence of the reduced density matrix of the detector interacting with the massless quantum scalar field. We find that the decoherence decay rates are different in the inertial and accelerated reference frames. We show that the exponential phase decay can be observed for relatively low accelerations, that can significantly improve the conditions for measuring the Unruh effect.
Topics & Concepts
Unruh effectQuantum decoherencePhysicsMassless particleDetectorQuantum mechanicsDensity matrixQuantumScalar (mathematics)Quantum electrodynamicsInertial frame of referenceExponential decayPhase (matter)Quantum dissipationMatrix (chemical analysis)Quantum systemParticle decayQuantum entanglementExponential functionNoise (video)Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir EffectQuantum Mechanics and ApplicationsQuantum and Classical Electrodynamics