Uniformly Accelerated Mirrors. Part 2: Quantum Correlations

TL;DR

This paper investigates quantum correlations in particle emission from uniformly accelerated mirrors, revealing how vacuum fluctuations convert into particle pairs and how interference effects influence pair creation.

Contribution

It extends previous work by analyzing stress tensor correlations and conditional values, demonstrating the impact of mirror acceleration and interference on quantum particle production.

Findings

Correlations exist between created particles and their partners even when mean fluxes vanish.

Interference effects can suppress or enable pair creation depending on the model used.

Regularization affects the presence of pair creation due to loss of destructive interference.

Abstract

We study the correlations between the particles emitted by a moving mirror. To this end, we first analyze $< T_{\mu\nu}(x) T_{\alpha\beta}(x') >$, the two-point function of the stress tensor of the radiation field. In this we generalize the work undertaken by Carlitz and Willey. To further analyze how the vacuum correlations on $I^-$ are scattered by the mirror and redistributed among the produced pairs of particles, we use a more powerful approach based on the value of $T_{\mu\nu}$ which is conditional to the detection of a given particle on $I^+$. We apply both methods to the fluxes emitted by a uniformly accelerated mirror. This case is particularly interesting because of its strong interferences which lead to a vanishing flux, and because of its divergences which are due to the infinite blue shift effects associated with the horizons. Using the conditional value of $T_{\mu\nu}$, we reveal the existence of correlations between created particles and their partners in a domain where the mean fluxes and the two-point function vanish. This demonstrates that the scattering by an accelerated mirror leads to a steady conversion of vacuum fluctuations into pairs of quanta. Finally, we study the scattering by two uniformly accelerated mirrors which follow symmetrical trajectories (i.e. which possess the same horizons). When using the Davies-Fulling model, the Bogoliubov coefficients encoding pair creation vanish because of perfectly destructive interferences. When using regularized amplitudes, these interferences are inevitably lost thereby giving rise to pair creation.