Unruh-DeWitt detectors in a delocalized massive shell
Abstract
We construct a model for the response of a detector to vacuum fluctuations inside a massive hollow shell in a superposition of positions. The delocalized source mass gives rise to a superposition of spacetime geometries and their associated vacuum fluctuations. To describe this system, we employ the formalism of quantum reference frames to transition to a frame in which the source mass occupies a definite position while the detector is in a superposition of positions. This allows the dynamics of the detector to be analyzed using standard tools of quantum field theory on a definite curved spacetime. We compute the detector response for a wide range of configurations of the shell and detector positions and investigate how information about the quantum state of the shell is encoded in the response function, identifying features of the superposition that are effectively captured by the detector. In particular, we show that, under appropriate postselection, the response function exhibits interference patterns, and identify regions of the parameter space of the model in which the shell-induced contributions to the interference terms are maximized.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{valle2026unruhdewitt,
title = {{Unruh-DeWitt detectors in a delocalized massive shell}},
author = {Giovanna F. do Valle and Saadat Salman Shariff and Natália S. Möller and Nelson Yokomizo},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.07058},
eprint = {2611.07058},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07058},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Unruh-DeWitt detectors in a delocalized massive shell
AU - Giovanna F. do Valle
AU - Saadat Salman Shariff
AU - Natália S. Möller
AU - Nelson Yokomizo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.07058
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07058
AB - We construct a model for the response of a detector to vacuum fluctuations inside a massive hollow shell in a superposition of positions. The delocalized source mass gives rise to a superposition of spacetime geometries and their associated vacuum fluctuations. To describe this system, we employ the formalism of quantum reference frames to transition to a frame in which the source mass occupies a definite position while the detector is in a superposition of positions. This allows the dynamics of the detector to be analyzed using standard tools of quantum field theory on a definite curved spacetime. We compute the detector response for a wide range of configurations of the shell and detector positions and investigate how information about the quantum state of the shell is encoded in the response function, identifying features of the superposition that are effectively captured by the detector. In particular, we show that, under appropriate postselection, the response function exhibits interference patterns, and identify regions of the parameter space of the model in which the shell-induced contributions to the interference terms are maximized.
ER -