Does gravitational wave assist vacuum steering and Bell nonlocality?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gravitational waves influence quantum steering and Bell nonlocality harvested by Unruh-DeWitt detectors interacting with vacuum scalar fields, revealing amplification, degradation, and resonance effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of gravitational waves on quantum steering and nonlocality, including resonance phenomena and changes in harvesting range, expanding understanding of quantum correlations in curved spacetime.

Findings

Gravitational waves can amplify or degrade quantum steerability.

Resonance occurs when detector energy gap matches gravitational wave frequency.

Bell nonlocality remains largely unaffected by gravitational waves.

Abstract

We study quantum steering and Bell nonlocality harvested by the local interaction of two Unruh-DeWitt detectors with the vacuum massless scalar field, both in the presence of gravitational waves and in Minkowski spacetime. It is shown that quantum steerability under the influence of gravitational waves can be greater than or less than quantum steerability in Minkowski spacetime, which means that the gravitational waves can amplify or degrade the harvested steering. In particular, a resonance effect occurs when the energy gap of the detector is tuned to the frequency of the gravitational wave. We also find that the harvesting-achievable separation range of vacuum steering can be expanded or reduced by the presence of gravitational waves, which depends on the energy gap, the gravitational wave frequency, and the duration of the gravitational wave action. It is interesting to note that two detector systems that satisfy the Bell inequality in most parameter spaces, regardless of the existence of gravitational waves, indicating that steering harvesting cannot be considered to be nonlocal.