Making two particle detectors in flat spacetime communicate quantumly

Abstract

A communication protocol with non-zero quantum capacity is found when the two communicating parts are particle detector models in (3+1)-dimensional spacetime. In particular, as detectors, we consider two harmonic oscillators interacting with a scalar field, whose evolution is generalized for whatever background spacetime and whatever spacetime smearing of the detectors. We then specialize to Minkowski spacetime and an initial Minkowski vacuum, considering a rapid interaction between the field and the two detectors, studying the case where the receiver is static and the sender is moving. The possibility to have a quantum capacity greater than zero stems from a relative acceleration between the detectors. Indeed, no reliable quantum communication is possible when the two detectors are static or moving inertially with respect to each other, but a reliable quantum communication can be achieved between a uniformly accelerated sender and an inertial receiver.