Quantum entanglement of Hawking-Partner modes in expanding cavities

Abstract

This article investigates quantum entanglement generated within a one-dimensional cavity where one boundary undergoes prescribed acceleration, a setup designed to mimic aspects of Hawking radiation. We quantify quantum correlations using logarithmic negativity for bipartitions where subsystem $A$ is a given mode and subsystem $B$ is the rest of the system. For initial pure states, we also consider a given mode and reconstruct its partner using the Hotta-Schützhold-Unruh formula, obtaining identical results. Interestingly, this last method offers notable computational efficiency. However, partner modes do not commute, due to the nontrivial multimode entanglement structure. Hence, a pairwise description will not be suitable for describing the full system. Besides, our findings reveal that the expanding cavity effectively acts as a squeezing device, with Hawking-partner pairs largely behaving as two-mode squeezed states. We checked that, in our setting, purification of Hawking modes is predominantly a low-energy process, with high-energetic particles contributing negligibly to the partner modes. Indeed, in both small and large acceleration regimes of the boundaries, quantum entanglement decreases toward the ultraviolet modes, indicating that higher-energy particles are more challenging to entangle and hence less probable to contribute in the purification process. Besides the initial vacuum state, we also consider one-mode squeezed and two-mode squeezed states, in order to confirm if quantum entanglement can be stimulated. Moreover, we analyze its robustness against initial thermal noise. Our analysis is based on numerical simulations and does not assume any approximation beyond the validity of our numerical algorithms. We conclude with a discussion about the possible implementation and observation of our results in the laboratory.