Local Quantum Thermometry using Unruh-De Witt detectors

Abstract

We propose an operational definition for the local temperature of a quantum field employing Unruh-DeWitt detectors, as used in the study of the Unruh and Hawking effects. With this definition, an inhomogeneous quantum system in equilibrium can have different local temperatures, in analogy with the Tolman-Ehrenfest theorem from general relativity. We study the local temperature distribution on the ground state of hopping fermionic systems on a curved background. The observed temperature tends to zero as the thermometer-system coupling $g$ vanishes. Yet, for small but finite values of $g$, we show that the product of the observed local temperature and the logarithm of the local speed of light is approximately constant. Our predictions should be testable on ultracold atomic systems.

8 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (25)

• Area laws for the entanglement entropy - a review
• Entropy and Area
• The Unruh effect and its applications
• Energy flow, partial equilibration and effective temperatures in systems with slow dynamics
• Quantum simulation of an extra dimension
• Individual quantum probes for optimal thermometry
• The effective temperature
• Theory of non-equilibrium thermoelectric effects in nanoscale junctions
• Locality of temperature
• Dirac Equation For Cold Atoms In Artificial Curved Spacetimes
• Single-qubit thermometry
• Violation of area-law scaling for the entanglement entropy in spin 1/2 chains
• Qubit thermometry for micromechanical resonators
• Quantum Tunneling of Massive Spin-1 Particles From Non-stationary Metrics
• Fluctuation-dissipation relations and critical quenches in the transverse field Ising chain
• Synthetic Unruh effect in cold atoms
• On the relation between Unruh and Sokolov--Ternov effects
• Quantum simulation of non-trivial topology
• Thermometry Precision in Strongly Correlated Ultracold Lattice Gases
• Local and Effective Temperatures of Quantum Driven Systems
• Temperature-driven transient charge and heat currents in nanoscale conductors
• Local Temperatures and Heat Flow in Quantum Driven Systems
• Macroscopic aspects of the Unruh effect
• Locality of temperature in spin chains
• Cold spots in quantum systems far from equilibrium: local entropies and temperatures near absolute zero

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Unruh effect for interacting particles with ultracold atoms
• Vacuum entanglement harvesting with a zero mode
• Zero mode suppression of superluminal signals in light-matter interactions
• The time traveler's guide to the quantization of zero modes
• Topological quantum thermometry
• Entanglement detachment in fermionic systems
• Quantum Entanglement In Inhomogeneous 1D Systems
• Operational models of temperature superpositions