Radiative process of two entangled uniformly accelerated atoms in a thermal bath: a possible case of anti-Unruh event

Abstract

Abstract We study the radiative process of two entangled two-level atoms uniformly accelerated in a thermal bath, coupled to a massless scalar field. First, by using the positive frequency Wightman function from the Minkowski modes with a Rindler transformation we provide the transition probabilities for the transitions from maximally entangled symmetric and anti-symmetric Bell states to the collective excited or ground state in (1 + 1) and (1 + 3) dimensions. We observe a possible case of anti-Unruh-like event in these transition probabilities, though the (1+1) and (1+3) dimensional results are not completely equivalent. We infer that thermal bath plays a major role in the occurrence of the anti-Unruh-like effect, as it is also present in the transition probabilities corresponding to a single detector in this case. Second, we have considered the Green’s functions in terms of the Rindler modes with the vacuum of Unruh modes for estimating the same. Here the anti-Unruh effect appears only for the transition from the anti-symmetric state to the collective excited or ground state. It is noticed that here the (1 + 1) and (1 + 3) dimensional results are equivalent, and for a single detector, we do not observe any anti-Unruh effect. This suggests that the entanglement between the states of the atoms is the main cause for the observed anti-Unruh effect in this case. In going through the investigation, we find that the transition probability for a single detector case is symmetric under the interchange between the thermal bath’s temperature and the Unruh temperature for Rindler mode analysis; whereas this is not the case for Minkowski mode. We further comment on whether this observation may shed light on the analogy between an accelerated observer and a real thermal bath. An elaborate investigation for the classifications of our observed anti-Unruh effects, i.e., either weak or strong anti-Unruh effect, is also thoroughly demonstrated.