English

Private information via the Unruh effect

Quantum Physics 2009-09-28 v4 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

In a relativistic theory of quantum information, the possible presence of horizons is a complicating feature placing restrictions on the transmission and retrieval of information. We consider two inertial participants communicating via a noiseless qubit channel in the presence of a uniformly accelerated eavesdropper. Owing to the Unruh effect, the eavesdropper's view of any encoded information is noisy, a feature the two inertial participants can exploit to achieve perfectly secure quantum communication. We show that the associated private quantum capacity is equal to the entanglement-assisted quantum capacity for the channel to the eavesdropper's environment, which we evaluate for all accelerations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0807.4536,
  title  = {Private information via the Unruh effect},
  author = {Kamil Bradler and Patrick Hayden and Prakash Panangaden},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.4536},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

5 pages. v2: footnote deleted and typos corrected. v3: major revision. New capacity (single-letter!) theorem and implicit assumption lifted

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:05:13.681Z