Tunable-Size Unruh-DeWitt Detector in a Multimode Cavity
Abstract
Quantum simulators based on Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) provide a powerful platform to study relativistic quantum-field phenomena in the lab and in particular emulate relativistic analog particle detectors. However, such detectors typically couple to excitations beyond the acoustic phonon regime, so that the nonlinear Bogoliubov dispersion introduces corrections that cause the effective relativistic description to break down. We propose to overcome this limitation using an intrinsically momentum-selective Unruh-DeWitt detector model in which a tweezer-trapped atom couples to the condensate through a multimode optical cavity. Although the atom is effectively pointlike, the cavity-mediated interaction kernel causes it to sample density fluctuations over a controllable finite region of the BEC equivalent to a finite-size detector. The effective detector size is tunable via the cavity mode structure determining a controllable momentum cutoff that filters out nonphononic excitations. We analytically calculate the response of such a detector for uniform linear acceleration and uniform circular motion and show that this momentum selectivity can enhance the signal at experimentally accessible accelerations. Compatible with existing cavity-QED platforms our scheme thus provides a versatile setting for analog quantum-field measurements or relativistic quantum-information protocols.
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BibTeX
@misc{brunner2026tunablesize,
title = {{Tunable-Size Unruh-DeWitt Detector in a Multimode Cavity}},
author = {Simon Brunner and Farokh Mivehvar and Helmut Ritsch and Arkadiusz Kosior},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.24451},
eprint = {2608.24451},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.24451},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tunable-Size Unruh-DeWitt Detector in a Multimode Cavity
AU - Simon Brunner
AU - Farokh Mivehvar
AU - Helmut Ritsch
AU - Arkadiusz Kosior
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/31
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.24451
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.24451
AB - Quantum simulators based on Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) provide a powerful platform to study relativistic quantum-field phenomena in the lab and in particular emulate relativistic analog particle detectors. However, such detectors typically couple to excitations beyond the acoustic phonon regime, so that the nonlinear Bogoliubov dispersion introduces corrections that cause the effective relativistic description to break down. We propose to overcome this limitation using an intrinsically momentum-selective Unruh-DeWitt detector model in which a tweezer-trapped atom couples to the condensate through a multimode optical cavity. Although the atom is effectively pointlike, the cavity-mediated interaction kernel causes it to sample density fluctuations over a controllable finite region of the BEC equivalent to a finite-size detector. The effective detector size is tunable via the cavity mode structure determining a controllable momentum cutoff that filters out nonphononic excitations. We analytically calculate the response of such a detector for uniform linear acceleration and uniform circular motion and show that this momentum selectivity can enhance the signal at experimentally accessible accelerations. Compatible with existing cavity-QED platforms our scheme thus provides a versatile setting for analog quantum-field measurements or relativistic quantum-information protocols.
ER -