On Coherent Delocalization in the Light-Matter Interaction

Abstract

We investigate how the coherent spreading of the center of mass wave function of a particle, such as an atom, molecule or ion, affects the particle's interaction with fields such as the electromagnetic field or a phonon field, in view also of possible applications to emerging quantum technologies. To this end, we develop a suitably generalized Unruh-deWitt model for the interaction between a delocalizing first quantized particle and a second quantized field. We study how the coherent spreading of the center of mass wave function of the particle affects emission and absorption rates and we find, in particular, that in the case of a supersonic coherent spreading in a medium, there should occur Cherenkov-like emissions, along with the excitation of the particle.

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• Quantum superpositions of Minkowski spacetime
• Unruh effect for detectors in superposition of accelerations
• Entanglement harvesting with coherently delocalized matter
• The geometry of spacetime from quantum measurements
• Second-quantized Unruh-DeWitt detectors and their quantum reference frame transformations
• Unruh Effect of Detectors with Quantized Center-of-Mass
• Causality and signalling in non-compact detector-field interactions
• Quantum time dilation in atomic spectra
• Duality in the dynamics of Unruh-DeWitt detectors in conformally related spacetimes
• Relativistic Unruh-DeWitt detectors with quantized center of mass
• Quantum time dilation in a gravitational field
• Particle detector models from path integrals of localized quantum fields
• Quantized mass-energy effects in an Unruh-DeWitt detector
• The Dynamics of Entropies at the Onset of Interactions
• Superpositions of thermalisations in relativistic quantum field theory
• Locally detecting UV cutoffs on a sphere with particle detectors
• Dimensional Reduction in Quantum Optics