Unruh phenomena and thermalization for qudit detectors

Abstract

We study Unruh phenomena for a qudit detector coupled to a quantized scalar field, comparing its response to that of a standard qubit-based Unruh-DeWitt detector. We show that there are limitations to the utility of the detailed balance condition as an indicator for Unruh thermality of higher-dimensional qudit detector models. This can be traced to the fact that a qudit has multiple possible transition channels between its energy levels, in contrast to the 2-level qubit model. We illustrate these limitations using two types of qutrit detector models based on the spin-1 representations of $SU(2)$ and the non-Hermitian generalization of the Pauli observables (the Heisenberg-Weyl operators).

10+5 pages, no figures; RevTeX4-2. v2: fixed typos and changed to match the published version

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• Disjointness of inertial KMS states and the role of Lorentz symmetry in thermalization
• A study of the spin 1 Unruh-De Witt detectors
• Contextuality from the vacuum
• Bipartite and tripartite entanglement in pure dephasing relativistic spin-boson model