Radiation matter entanglement

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the electromagnetic field becomes entangled with dielectric materials at zero temperature, revealing non-thermal mixed states and analyzing how their entropy depends on object separation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that dielectrics do not thermalize the field and characterizes the resulting non-thermal states and their entropy behavior.

Findings

The field forms non-thermal mixed states in presence of dielectrics.

Second Renyi entropy decays as R^{-4} with distance between objects.

Dielectrics do not act as thermal baths for the electromagnetic field.

Abstract

The quantization of the electromagnetic field in the presence of material bodies, at zero temperature is considered. It is shown that a dielectric does not act as thermal bath for the field and yields a non-trivial non-thermal mixed state of the field. The properties of this state and its entropy are studied. The dependence of the second Renyi entropy of the field on the distance between dispersive objects is shown to decay as R^{-4} for generic bodies.