Detecting Acceleration-Enhanced Vacuum Fluctuations with Atoms Inside a Cavity

Abstract

Some of the most prominent theoretical predictions of modern times, e.g., the Unruh effect, Hawking radiation, and gravity-assisted particle creation, are supported by the fact that various quantum constructs like particle content and vacuum fluctuations of a quantum field are observer-dependent. Despite being fundamental in nature, these predictions have not yet been experimentally verified because one needs extremely strong gravity (or acceleration) to bring them within the existing experimental resolution. In this Letter, we demonstrate that a post-Newtonian rotating atom inside a far-detuned cavity experiences strongly modified quantum fluctuations in the inertial vacuum. As a result, the emission rate of an excited atom gets enhanced significantly along with a shift in the emission spectrum due to the change in the quantum correlation under rotation. We propose an optomechanical setup that is capable of realizing such acceleration-induced particle creation with current technology. This provides a novel and potentially feasible experimental proposal for the direct detection of noninertial quantum field theoretic effects.

Published in PRL

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Cited by in corpus (28)

• Unruh and analogue Unruh temperatures for circular motion in 3+1 and 2+1 dimensions
• Circular motion analogue Unruh effect in a $2+1$ thermal bath: Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor
• Probing Lorentz-Invariance-Violation Induced Nonthermal Unruh Effect in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Dipolar Condensates
• Cavity optimization for Unruh effect at small accelerations
• Geometric phase assisted enhancement of non-inertial cavity-QED effects
• Nonthermal acceleration radiation of atoms near a black hole in presence of dark energy
• Effect of tidal curvature on dynamics of accelerated probes
• Lamb shift as a witness for quantum noninertial effects
• Landauer's principle in Qubit-Cavity quantum field theory Interaction in Vacuum and Thermal States
• Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect for accelerated two-level single and entangled atomic systems
• Coherently amplifying photon production from vacuum with a dense cloud of accelerating photodetectors
• Strong Noninertial Radiative Shifts in Atomic Spectra at Low Accelerations
• Time-resolved and Superradiantly Amplified Unruh Effect
• Connecting the circular and drifted Rindler Unruh effects
• Using nanokelvin quantum thermometry to detect timelike Unruh effect in a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Significant circular Unruh effect at small acceleration
• Spontaneous excitation of a centripetally accelerated atom coupled to electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations near a reflecting boundary
• Molecular entanglement as a signature of the Unruh effect
• Extensive manipulation of transition rates and substantial population inversion of rotating atoms inside a cavity
• Waiting around for Unruh
• Thermality and athermality in the Unruh effect
• Detecting the Unruh Effect via an Engineered Low-Mass Field in a Superconducting Qubit
• Canonical Quantization of the U(1) Gauge Field in the right Rindler-wedge in the Rindler Coordinates
• Decay of uniformly rotating particles
• Dynamical Maps for Accelerating Detectors
• Quantum theory of statistical radiation pressure in free space
• Canonical Quantization of the U(1) Gauge Field in the Rindler Coordinates
• Finite-time Unruh effect: Waiting for the transient effects to fade off