Dispersive vacuum as a decoherence amplifier of an Unruh-DeWitt detector

J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 57 445305 (2024) Recently, interest has been growing in studies on discrete or "pixelated" space-time that, through modifications in the dispersion relation, can treat the vacuum as a dispersive medium. Discrete spacetime considers that spacetime has a cellular str...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Barros, Pedro H. M, Costa, Helder A. S
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext bestellen
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 57 445305 (2024) Recently, interest has been growing in studies on discrete or "pixelated" space-time that, through modifications in the dispersion relation, can treat the vacuum as a dispersive medium. Discrete spacetime considers that spacetime has a cellular structure on the order of the Planck length, and if this is true we should certainly have observable effects. In this paper, we investigated the effects caused by the dispersive vacuum on the decoherence process of an Unruh-DeWitt detector, our setup consists of a uniformly accelerated detector, initially in a qubit state, which interacts with a massless scalar field during a time interval finite. We use dispersion relations drawn from doubly special relativity and Ho\v{r}ava-Lifshitz gravity, with these modifications the vacuum becomes dispersive and has a corresponding refractive index. We calculate the probability transition rates, the probability of finding the detector in the ground state, and the quantum coherence variation. Our results indicate that the decoherence process occurs more quickly in cases with changes in the dispersion relation in the regime of high accelerations and interaction time. Additionally, the decoherence increases as the vacuum becomes more dispersive due to the increase in the order of modification in the dispersion relation, and this happens because the dispersive vacuum amplifies the effects of quantum fluctuations that are captured by the detector when interacting with the field.
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2501.08829