Effect of relativistic acceleration on localized two-mode Gaussian quantum states

Abstract

We study how an arbitrary Gaussian state of two localized wave packets, prepared in an inertial frame of reference, is described by a pair of uniformly accelerated observers. We explicitly compute the resulting state for arbitrarily chosen proper accelerations of the observers and independently tuned distance between them. To do so, we introduce a generalized Rindler frame of reference and analytically derive the corresponding state transformation as a Gaussian channel. Our approach provides several new insights into the phenomenon of vacuum entanglement such as the highly nontrivial effect of spatial separation between the observers including sudden death of entanglement. We also calculate the fidelity of the two-mode channel for nonvacuum Gaussian states and obtain bounds on classical and quantum capacities of a single-mode channel. Our framework can be directly applied to any continuous variable quantum information protocol in which the effects of acceleration or gravity cannot be neglected.