Joint-measurement advantage and finite-time transitions in accelerated detector registers

Abstract

The Unruh response thermalizes accelerated detectors, but the entanglement remaining in a register does not by itself specify what distributed measurements can recover. We study this distinction for a four-qubit cluster state whose two assisting nodes independently undergo generalized amplitude damping, while the target nodes remain isolated and the environments are inaccessible. We derive the exact joint-assisted concurrence and the exact one-way value for arbitrary local measurements. The joint optimum equals the bipartition negativity, and computational-basis measurements attain the one-way optimum. A polar-decomposition argument, together with compactness, establishes a necessary and sufficient condition for separable measurements to attain the joint optimum and proves a strict gap whenever this condition fails. For assisting detectors at equal Unruh temperature with relaxation-rate ratio $r>1$, joint advantage exists precisely when the thermal excitation factor satisfies $q<1/r$. At finite positive temperature it ends at a unique finite time, while the remaining entanglement is nonzero. For $r=2$, both the transition time and remaining resource have closed expressions. These results identify when joint assistance is necessary within the independent weak-coupling thermalization model.