Entanglement harvesting from the electromagnetic vacuum with hydrogenlike atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how realistic hydrogenlike atoms can extract entanglement from the electromagnetic vacuum, revealing new effects and efficiencies compared to simplified models, with implications for quantum information processing.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of entanglement harvesting using realistic atomic models and electromagnetic fields, highlighting differences from scalar field models and idealized atoms.

Findings

Anisotropies in entanglement harvesting observed

Exchange of angular momentum affects entanglement

Vacuum entanglement harvesting can be more efficient with realistic atoms

Abstract

We study how two fully-featured hydrogenlike atoms harvest entanglement from the electromagnetic field vacuum, even when the atoms are spacelike separated. We compare the electromagnetic case ---qualitatively and quantitatively--- with previous results that used scalar fields and featureless, idealized atomic models. Our study reveals the new traits that emerge when we relax these idealizations, such as anisotropies in entanglement harvesting and the effect of exchange of angular momentum. We show that, under certain circumstances, relaxing previous idealizations makes vacuum entanglement harvesting more efficient.