Semiclassical gravity from the perspective of quantum information theory

Full text: Quantum field theory in curved spacetimes makes remarkable predictions about the behavior of quantum fields in the presence of strong gravitational fields. Nevertheless, these striking discoveries raises several issues. The development of a theory at the interface between relativity, quantum mechanics, and information theory could not only shed new light on such questions as well as allowing to uncover new low-energy quantum gravity effects. In this talk I will review several results in this new field. In particular it will be shown that the Bell inequalities can be satisfied rather than violated by quantum mechanics if the detectors making the measurements are set in relativistic motion. It will also be shown that the entanglement between a pair of quits can suffer a sudden death when one of the quits accelerates uniformly for a finite proper time. This result will be used to analyze the behavior of entanglement in the vicinity of a nonrotating chargeless black hole. I will end with a discussion about the prospects of the field, emphasizing the so called 'black hole information paradox' and the question of what is the microscopic origin of the black hole entropy. (author)