Entanglement between accelerated probes in a de Sitter spacetime

Abstract: We initiate an investigation into features of vacuum entanglement as probed by accelerated quantum probes in curved spacetime. Focussing specifically on de Sitter (dS) spacetime with curvature $\Lambda$, we obtain several exact results corresponding to different kinematical set-up of the probes. The interaction with the quantum field creates a non-local correlation between initially uncorrelated probes accelerating in different directions. It is well known that a single quantum probe in dS spacetime with uniform acceleration $a$ responds exactly as a quantum probe in Minkowski spacetime with "effective" acceleration $q \equiv\sqrt{a^2+\Lambda}$. However, no such mapping generically exists for the entanglement between probes. Our results suggest that entanglement exhibits independent variations with changes in acceleration and curvature depending on different configurations of detector motion.