Quantum Communication in Rindler Spacetime

Prakash Panangaden ( Computing Laboratory, University of Oxford -- on sabbatical from School of Computer Science, McGill University )

Communication between observers in a relativistic scenario has proved to bea setting for a fruitful dialogue between quantum field theory and quantuminformation theory.  A state that an inertial observer in Minkowski spaceperceives to be the vacuum will appear to an accelerating observer to be athermal bath of radiation. We study the impact of this Davies-Fulling-Unruhnoise on communication, particularly quantum communication from an inertialsender to an accelerating observer and private communication between twoinertial observers in the presence of an accelerating eavesdropper. In bothcases, we establish compact, tractable formulas for the associatedcommunication capacities assuming encodings that allow a single excitationin one of a fixed number of modes per use of the communications channel.

In this talk I will focus on the information theoretic aspects with the quantum field theory very much in the background.  It should be widely accessible.