The geometric phase of a two-level atom under the Hawking effect in a Kerr black hole

We study the Hawking effect in terms of the geometric phase for a two-level atom coupled to vacuum fluctuations in the background of Kerr black hole in a gedanken experiment. Since the atom interacts with a bath of fluctuating massless scalar field, its geometric phase for the nonunitary evolution turns out to be affected by the spacetime curvature that backscatters the vacuum field modes. We examine the geometric phase for two kinds of vacua, i.e. the Unruh vacuum and the Candelas–Chrzanowski–Howard vacuum. We find that for both of these two cases, the geometric phase of the static atom locating outside the infinite redshift surface (or the stationary atom locating inside the ergosphere) exposes that the atom behaves as if it were immersed in a thermal radiation at the Hawking temperature from the Kerr black hole. Therefore, our results show that one in principle can reveal the Hawking effect in the Kerr black hole by analyzing the correction of the geometric phase as opposed to that in a flat spacetime. (paper)