Harvesting Entanglement By Uniformly Accelerated Detectors In The Presence Of A Reflecting Boundary

In quantum theory,the vacuum is full of quantum fluctuations and it contains classical and quantum correlations.Furthermore,from the point of view of local observers,the vacuum state of any quantum field is entangled.Studies have found that localized particle detectors can extract entanglement from the vacuum state of a quantum field,this phenomenon is known as “entanglement harvesting”,and it is sensitive to the spacetime topology and intricate motions of detectors.The modification of quantum vacuum fluctuations of the scalar fields by the presence of a boundary,which the detectors are coupled to,can lead to a lot of novel effects,such as the Casimir effect ect;in addition,a uniformly accelerated observer perceives the Minkowski vacuum as a thermal bath.That is,the accelerated motion of the observer causes quantum thermal effects,which is known as the Unruh effect.So,the study of entanglement harvesting in the reflection boundary that can help us better understand the relativistic and quantum effects.In this thesis,we study,in the framework of entanglement harvesting protocols,the entanglement harvesting of a pair of uniformly accelerated detectors,locally interacting with vacuum massless scalar fields subjected to a perfectly reflecting plane boundary.We study three acceleration scenarios,including parallel,anti-parallel and mutually perpendicular accelerations.We find that the presence of the boundary generally degrades the amount of the harvested entanglement when two detectors are very close to the boundary for all three acceleration scenarios.However,when the distance between detectors and the boundary becomes comparable to the interaction duration parameter,the amount of harvested entanglement may approach a peak,which even goes beyond that without a boundary.Remarkably,the parameter space of the detectors’ separation and the magnitude of acceleration that allows entanglement harvesting to occur is enlarged due to the presence of the boundary.In this sense,the boundary plays a double-edged role on entanglement harvesting,degrading in general the amount of entanglement while enlarging the harvesting-achievable parameter space.A comparison of three different acceleration scenarios shows that the phenomena of entanglement harvesting crucially depends on the magnitude of acceleration,the separation between two detectors and the detectors’ distance from the boundary.