Unruh phenomena and thermalization for qudit detectors

Abstract

We study Unruh phenomena for a qudit detector coupled to a quantized scalar field, comparing its response to that of a standard qubit-based Unruh-DeWitt detector. We show that there are limitations to the utility of the detailed balance condition as an indicator for Unruh thermality of higher-dimensional qudit detector models. This can be traced to the fact that a qudit has multiple possible transition channels between its energy levels, in contrast to the 2-level qubit model. We illustrate these limitations using two types of qutrit detector models based on the spin-1 representations of $SU(2)$ and the non-Hermitian generalization of the Pauli observables (the Heisenberg-Weyl operators).