Reflecting boundary induced modulation of tripartite coherence harvesting

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a reflecting boundary influences the extraction of quantum coherence and entanglement by Unruh-DeWitt detectors, revealing boundary effects, detector geometry impacts, and the hierarchical relationship between coherence and entanglement as quantum resources.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of boundary-induced effects on quantum coherence and entanglement harvesting, highlighting the robustness of coherence and the conditions for enhanced entanglement.

Findings

Decreasing detector-boundary distance reduces coherence harvesting.

Boundary effects can preserve and amplify entanglement.

Orthogonal detector configurations outperform parallel ones in coherence harvesting.

Abstract

We study the extraction of quantum coherence by three static Unruh-DeWitt (UDW) detectors that interact locally with a massless scalar vacuum field in the vicinity of an infinite perfectly reflecting boundary. Depending on the setup, the detectors are positioned either parallel or orthogonal to the boundary, with their energy gaps chosen to satisfy the hierarchy $\Omega_C\geq \Omega_B\geq \Omega_A$. Our analysis reveals that decreasing the detector-boundary separation leads to a monotonic degradation of quantum coherence, whereas the same boundary effect can simultaneously preserve and even amplify the harvested quantum entanglement. Moreover, when the detectors possess distinct energy gaps, coherence extraction is further inhibited; strikingly, such non-identical configurations substantially enhance the efficiency of entanglement harvesting and markedly extend the range of detector separations over which non-negligible entanglement can be generated. Nevertheless, the harvesting of nonlocal quantum coherence is achievable over a significantly broader range of detector separations than that of quantum entanglement. Despite exhibiting similar overall behavior, orthogonal detector configurations outperform parallel ones in coherence harvesting, highlighting the quantitative influence of detector geometry. Overall, our study reveals a hierarchical distinction between quantum coherence and entanglement as operational resources in structured vacuum fields: quantum coherence is not only more readily accessible across space but also more robust than entanglement, whereas entanglement exhibits richer features and can be selectively activated and enhanced through boundary effects and detector non-uniformity.