English

Spatially Overlapped Partners in Quantum Field Theory

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-03-04 v5 High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

In quantum field theory particles are physically defined as what Unruh-DeWitt particle detectors observe. By detecting a particle mode AA, a reduced density operator for a quantum state of AA is constructed. Even if the entire quantum state of the quantum field is pure, the state of AA is not pure but mixed due to entanglement between other subsystems. The partner mode BB of the field is defined as a purification partner of AA such that the ABAB system in a pure state. We show that, without any fine-tuning of the particle detector design of AA, the weighting function of partner BB has spatial overlap of that of AA. We show a general formula of partner BB associated with arbitrarily fixed AA of a free field in a general Gaussian state. We demonstrate an example of memory effects in an expanding Freedman-Roberson-Walker universe.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.03467,
  title  = {Spatially Overlapped Partners in Quantum Field Theory},
  author = {Jose Trevison and Koji Yamaguchi and Masahiro Hotta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.03467},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

35 pages, 6 figures. Published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T02:55:50.623Z