PhD Comprehensive Seminar | Maria Rosa Preciado Rivas, Quantum detectors freely falling into black holes

Zoom (please email amgrad@uwaterloo.ca for meeting link) 

Candidate

Maria Rosa Preciado Rivas | Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo

Title

Quantum detectors freely falling into black holes

Abstract

The Unruh-DeWitt model for particle detectors has been widely used to probe quantum fields for noninertial observers or curved spacetime. However, despite more than four decades of studying the response of these detectors, little is known about their response as they freely fall across the event horizons of black holes. In this seminar, I present the results of an investigation of the transition rate of a particle detector freely falling into a three-dimensional black hole. I consider the potential of such detectors to serve as an ‘early warning system’ that indicates if an observer is about cross the horizon of a black hole.

I also introduce some directions for future research. I will delve into the study of particle detectors and black holes, considering more complicated trajectories and additional detectors. The most interesting problem will be to study what happens to two maximally entangled qubits when one (or both) falls into a black hole. There is much folklore about this subject but no actual quantitative studies. The methods we have developed are now poised to address this problem, and the results will provide further insight into the relationship between gravity and quantum physics.