Cosmological particle production, quantum mechanical scattering in one dimension and their quantum simulation

by Mr Christian Schmidt (Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena)

Friday 12 Jan 2024, 15:00 → 16:30 Europe/Berlin

Online seminar on Zoom

https://uni-jena-de.zoom-x.de/j/61595955422?pwd=WWpyTTUvV0pyeUMzNUJzbEl0T3hOUT09

Meeting-ID: 615 9595 5422
Kenncode: 036803

Abstract:

Particle production in cosmological spacetimes is a hallmark prediction of curved quantum field theory, sharing its salient features with the famous Hawking effect. As the generation of cosmological perturbations from microscopic quantum fluctuations in the early Universe can be mapped to the dynamics of a scalar field in a time-dependent spacetime, the latter model has sparked manifold theoretical investigation.
Through rapid technological advancements in recent years, also experimental research on cosmological particle production can be routinely conducted in controlled laboratory environments where Bose-Einstein-condensates (BECs) play a prominent role.
Here, we formulate a mapping between cosmological particle production in a (D+1)-dimensional spacetime and one-dimensional quantum mechanical scattering problems to synthesize insights from both frameworks. On the one hand, this mapping provides an avenue to simulate arbitrary quantum-mechanical scattering potentials in a laboratory despite their possibly idealized nature.
On the other hand, clear explanations for emerging structures in the cosmological system are obtained with new insights about the invariance of cosmological vacua. The explored cosmological scenarios and their scattering analogues are tuned to be implemented in a (2+1)-dimensional BEC-quantum-simulator, where abrupt changes in the cosmological spacetime play a significant role.