Quantum aspects of spacetime: A quantum optics view of acceleration radiation and black holes
arXiv:2508.17401 · doi:10.1080/14786435.2025.2605361
Abstract
For the centennial of quantum mechanics, we offer an overview of the central role played by quantum information and thermalization in problems involving fundamental properties of spacetime and gravitational physics. This is an open area of research still a century after the initial development of formal quantum mechanics, highlighting the effectiveness of quantum physics in the description of all natural phenomena. These remarkable connections can be highlighted with the tools of modern quantum optics, which effectively addresses the three-fold interplay of interacting atoms, fields, and spacetime backgrounds describing gravitational fields and noninertial systems. In this review article, we select aspects of these phenomena centered on quantum features of the acceleration radiation of particles in the presence of black holes. The ensuing horizon-brightened radiation (HBAR) provides a case study of the role played by quantum physics in nontrivial spacetime behavior, and also shows a fundamental correspondence with black hole thermodynamics.
93 pages, 11 figures. Revised version with: (i) typos corrected; (ii) 5 additional figures (Figs. 1, 3, 7, 9, and 10); (iii) subsubsections added in Secs. I, II, III, and IV; (iv) significant expansions of Secs. III and IV; (v) subsections added in Sec. VII
References in corpus (34)
- Quantum nature of a strongly-coupled single quantum dot-cavity system
- The Unruh effect and its applications
- Resolving photon number states in a superconducting circuit
- Generalized rotating-wave approximation for arbitrarily large coupling
- A Primer for Black Hole Quantum Physics
- The quantum Rabi model: solution and dynamics
- The Kerr Metric
- Generation of EPR-entangled radiation through an atomic reservoir
- Anomaly in conformal quantum mechanics: From molecular physics to black holes
- Relativistic Quantum Information in Detectors-Field Interactions
- Backreaction and Unruh effect: New insights from exact solutions of uniformly accelerated detectors
- Scully-Lamb quantum laser model for parity-time-symmetric whispering-gallery microcavities: Gain saturation effects and non-reciprocity
- Analogue simulations of quantum gravity with fluids
- Near-horizon aspects of acceleration radiation by free fall of an atom into a black hole
- Renormalization in conformal quantum mechanics
- Anomalous Commutator Algebra for Conformal Quantum Mechanics
- Acceleration radiation of an atom freely falling into a Kerr black hole and near-horizon conformal quantum mechanics
- Dispersion Interactions between Neutral Atoms and the Quantum Electrodynamical Vacuum
- Hawking radiation by Kerr black holes and conformal symmetry
- Liouvillian spectral collapse in the Scully-Lamb laser model
- Analogue gravity and the Hawking effect: historical perspective and literature review
- SO(2,1) conformal anomaly: Beyond contact interactions
- Semiclassical Methods in Curved Spacetime and Black Hole Thermodynamics
- Equivalence principle and HBAR entropy of an atom falling into a quantum corrected black hole
- Near horizon aspects (and beyond) of acceleration radiation of an atom falling into a large class of static spherically symmetric black hole geometries
- Atom falling into a quantum corrected charged black hole and HBAR entropy
- Horizon brightened accelerated radiation in the background of braneworld black holes
- Practical Few-Atom Quantum Reservoir Computing
- Spectral Properties of the Symmetry Generators of Conformal Quantum Mechanics: A Path-Integral Approach
- Inverse logarithmic correction in the HBAR entropy of an atom falling into a renormalization group improved charged black hole
- Effective Field Theory Program for Conformal Quantum Anomalies
- Derivative coupling in horizon brightened acceleration radiation: a quantum optics approach
- Conformal Enhancement of Holographic Scaling in Black Hole Thermodynamics: A Near-Horizon Heat-Kernel Framework
- Atom-field dynamics in curved spacetime