We illustrate the analogue of the Unruh effect for a quantum system on the real line. Our derivation relies solely on basic elements of representation theory of the group of affine transformations without a notion of time or metric. Our result shows that a thermal distribution naturally emerges in connecting quantum states belonging to representations associated to distinct notions of translational symmetry.
It is shown how the characteristic thermal effects that observers experience in space-times possessing an event horizon can manifest already in a simple quantum system with affine symmetry living on the real line. The derivation presented is essentially group theoretic in nature: a thermal state emerges naturally when comparing different representations of the group of affine transformations of the real line. The freedom in the choice of different notions of translation generators is the key to the Unruh effect on a line we describe.
We investigate the degradation of quantum entanglement in the Schwarzschild-de Sitter black hole spacetime, by studying the mutual information and the logarithmic negativity for maximally entangled, bipartite initial states for massless minimal scalar fields. This spacetime is endowed with a black hole as well as a cosmological event horizon, giving rise to particle creation at two different temperatures. We consider two independent descriptions of thermodynamics and particle creation in this background. The first involves thermal equilibrium of an observer with the individual Hawking temperature of either of the horizons. We show that as of the asymptotically flat/anti-de Sitter black holes, the entanglement or correlation degrades here with increasing Hawking temperature. The second treats both the horizons combinedly to define a total entropy and an effective equilibrium temperature. We present a field theoretic derivation of this effective temperature and argue that unlike the usual cases, the particle creation here is not ocurring in causally disconnected spacetime wedges but in a single region. Using these states, we then show that in this scenario the entanglement never degrades but increases with increasing black hole temperature and holds true no matter how hot the black hole becomes or how small the cosmological constant is. We argue that this phenomenon can have no analogue in the asymptotically flat/anti-de Sitter black hole spacetimes.
We examine the late-time evolution of a qubit (or Unruh-De Witt detector) that hovers very near to the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole, while interacting with a free quantum scalar field. The calculation is carried out perturbatively in the dimensionless qubit/field coupling $g$, but rather than computing the qubit excitation rate due to field interactions (as is often done), we instead use Open EFT techniques to compute the late-time evolution to all orders in $g^2 t/r_s$ (while neglecting order $g^4 t/r_s$ effects) where $r_s = 2GM$ is the Schwarzschild radius. We show that for qubits sufficiently close to the horizon the late-time evolution takes a simple universal form that depends only on the near-horizon geometry, assuming only that the quantum field is prepared in a Hadamard-type state (such as the Hartle-Hawking or Unruh vacua). When the redshifted energy difference, $omega_infty$, between the two qubit states (as measured by a distant observer looking at the detector) satisfies $omega_infty r_s ll 1$ this universal evolution becomes Markovian and describes an exponential approach to equilibrium with the Hawking radiation, with the off-diagonal and diagonal components of the qubit density matrix relaxing to equilibrium with different characteristic times, both of order $r_s/g^2$.
We address the question of the uniqueness of the Schwarzschild black hole by considering the following question: How many meaningful solutions of the Einstein equations exist that agree with the Schwarzschild solution (with a fixed mass m) everywhere except maybe on a codimension one hypersurface? The perhaps surprising answer is that the solution is unique (and uniquely the Schwarzschild solution everywhere in spacetime) *unless* the hypersurface is the event horizon of the Schwarzschild black hole, in which case there are actually an infinite number of distinct solutions. We explain this result and comment on some of the possible implications for black hole physics.
Expanding around null hypersurfaces, such as generic Kerr black hole horizons, using co-rotating Kruskal-Israel-like coordinates we study the associated surface charges, their symmetries and the corresponding phase space within Einstein gravity. Our surface charges are not integrable in general. Their integrable part generates an algebra including superrotations and a BMS_3-type algebra that we dub T-Witt algebra. The non-integrable part accounts for the flux passing through the null hypersurface. We put our results in the context of earlier constructions of near horizon symmetries, soft hair and of the program to semi-classically identify Kerr black hole microstates.