Vacuum entanglement harvesting with a zero mode

Abstract

We investigate vacuum entanglement harvesting in the presence of a zero mode. We show that, for a variety of detector models and couplings (namely, Unruh-DeWitt qubit and harmonic oscillator detectors, amplitude and derivative coupling), the results are strongly dependent on the state of the zero mode, revealing an ambiguity in studies of entanglement harvesting with Neumann or periodic boundary conditions, or in general in spacetimes with toroidal topologies.