On the entanglement of a quantum field with a dispersive medium

Abstract

In this Letter we study the entanglement of a quantum radiation field interacting with a dielectric medium. In particular, we describe the quantum mixed state of a field interacting with a dielectric through plasma and Drude models and show that these generate very different entanglement behavior, as manifested in the entanglement entropy of the field. We also present a formula for a "Casimir" entanglement entropy, i.e., the distance dependence of the field entropy. Finally, we study a toy model of the interaction between two plates. In this model, the field entanglement entropy is divergent; however, as in the Casimir effect, its distance-dependent part is finite, and the field matter entanglement is reduced when the objects are far.

Final published PRL version

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Some Results on Mutual Information of Disjoint Regions in Higher Dimensions
• Schwinger Effect and Entanglement Entropy in Confining Geometries
• Non-Markovianity in atom-surface dispersion forces
• The Casimir effect as a sum-over-modes in dissipative systems
• Entanglement entropy of dispersive media from thermodynamic entropy in one higher dimension
• Beyond AdS Space-times, New Holographic Correspondences and Applications
• Atom-Field-Medium Interactions I: Graded Influence Actions for $N$ Harmonic Atoms in a Dielectric-Altered Quantum Field
• On the Casimir Energy of Frequency Dependent Interactions