Entanglement between accelerated probes in a de Sitter spacetime

Abstract

We initiate an investigation into features of vacuum entanglement as probed by accelerated quantum probes in curved spacetime. Focussing specifically on de Sitter (dS) spacetime with curvature $\hat{I}›$, we obtain several exact results corresponding to different kinematical set-up of the probes. The interaction with the quantum field creates a non-local correlation between initially uncorrelated probes accelerating in different directions. It is well known that a single quantum probe in dS spacetime with uniform acceleration $a$ responds exactly as a quantum probe in Minkowski spacetime with "effective" acceleration $q\equiv \sqrt{a^2+\hat{I}›}$. However, no such mapping generically exists for the entanglement between probes. Our results suggest that entanglement exhibits independent variations with changes in acceleration and curvature depending on different configurations of detector motion.

V3: The current version matches the published article in Phys. Rev. D