Unruh-DeWitt fermion detector on a (1+1)-dimensional cylindrical spacetime: Arbitrary worldlines and inequivalent spin structures

Abstract

We examine an Unruh-DeWitt particle detector which couples linearly to the scalar density of a massless Dirac field on the static cylindrical quotient of the (1+1)-dimensional Minkowski spacetime, allowing the detector's motion to remain arbitrary and working to leading order in perturbation theory. We show that the detector's response distinguishes the periodic and antiperiodic spin structures, and the zero mode that is present for periodic spinors contributes to the response by a state-dependent but well defined and controllable amount.

Design constraints for Unruh-DeWitt quantum computers

“…Massless Dirac fermions evaluated in UDW detector models have been a promising endeavor for relativistic quantum information processes [34,43,44]. However, scalar field theories have been more successful in producing simulations of quantum information channels in relativistic quantum information [5,7,34].…”