Harvesting correlations from the quantum vacuum

TL;DR

This paper investigates how various parameters affect the ability of particle detectors to extract entanglement and correlations from the quantum vacuum, revealing that smooth switching enhances harvesting efficiency.

Contribution

It demonstrates that smooth switching outperforms sudden switching for entanglement harvesting and explores the influence of spacetime and detector parameters on correlation extraction.

Findings

Smooth switching is more efficient than sudden switching for entanglement harvesting.

Spacelike separated detectors can effectively harvest vacuum entanglement.

Parameter dependencies can optimize classical and quantum correlation harvesting.

Abstract

We analyze the harvesting of entanglement and classical correlations from the quantum vacuum to particle detectors. We assess the impact on the detectors' harvesting ability of the spacetime dimensionality, the suddenness of the detectors' switching, their physical size and their internal energy structure. Our study reveals several interesting dependences on these parameters that can be used to optimize the harvesting of classical and quantum correlations. Furthermore, we find that, contrary to previous belief, smooth switching is much more efficient than sudden switching in order to harvest vacuum entanglement, especially when the detectors remain spacelike separated. Additionally, we show that the reported phenomenology of spacelike entanglement harvesting is not altered by subleading order perturbative corrections.