Radiation-reaction-induced transitions of two maximally entangled atoms in non-inertial motion

Abstract: We apply the DDC formalism [proposed by Dalibard, Dupont-Roc and Cohen-Tannoudji] to study the average rate of change of energy of two identical two-level atoms interacting with the vacuum massless scalar field in synchronized motion along stationary trajectories. By separating the contributions of vacuum fluctuations and atomic radiation reaction, we first show that for the two-atom system initially prepared in the factorizable eigenstates $|g_Ag_B\rangle$ and $|e_Ae_B\rangle$, where $g$ and $e$ represent the ground state and the excited state of a single atom respectively, both vacuum fluctuations and atomic radiation reaction contribute to the average rate of change of energy of the two-atom system, and the contribution of vacuum fluctuations is independent of the interatomic separation while that of atomic radiation reaction is dependent on it. This is contrary to the existing results in the literature where vacuum fluctuations are interatomic-separation dependent. However, if the two-atom system is initially prepared in the unfactorizable symmetric/antisymmetric entangled state, the average rate of change of energy of the two-atom system is never perturbed by the vacuum fluctuations, but is totally a result of the atomic radiation reaction. We then consider two special cases of motion of the two-atom system which is initially prepared in the symmetric/antisymmetric entangled state, i.e., synchronized inertial motion and synchronized uniform acceleration. In contrast to the average rate of change of energy of a single uniformly accelerated atom, the average rate of change of energy of the uniformly accelerated two-atom system is nonthermal-like. The effects of noninertial motion on the transitions of states of the two correlated atoms are also discussed.