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arXiv:2412.18889 · Physical Review Letters

Experimental Particle Production in Time-Dependent Spacetimes: A One-Dimensional Scattering Problem

Marius Sparn, Elinor Kath, Nikolas Liebster, Jelte Duchene, Christian F. Schmidt, Mireia Tolosa-Simeón, Álvaro Parra-López, Stefan Floerchinger, Helmut Strobel, Markus K. Oberthaler

Published Dec 24, 2024• 10 citations
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Abstract

We experimentally study cosmological particle production in a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate, whose density excitations map to an analog cosmology. The expansion of spacetime is realized with tunable interactions. The particle spectrum can be understood through an analogy to quantum mechanical scattering, in which the dynamics of the spacetime metric determine the shape of the scattering potential. Hallmark scattering phenomena such as resonant forward scattering and Bragg reflection are connected to their cosmological counterparts, namely linearly expanding space and bouncing universes. We compare our findings to a theoretical description that extends beyond the acoustic approximation, which enables us to apply the model to high-momentum excitations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.133.260201

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Phonons have the characteristic linear dispersion relation of massless relativistic particles. They arise as low-energy excitations of Bose-Einstein condensates and, in nonhomogeneous situations, are governed by a space- and time-dependent acoustic metric. We discuss how this metric can be experimentally designed to realize curved spacetime geometries, in particular, expanding Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker cosmologies, with negative, vanishing, or positive spatial curvature. A nonvanishing Hubble rate can be obtained through a time-dependent scattering length of the background condensate. For relativistic quantum fields, this leads to the phenomenon of particle production, which we describe in detail. We explain how particle production and other interesting features of quantum field theory in curved spacetime can be tested in terms of experimentally accessible correlation functions.
Analog models of gravity have been motivated by the possibility of investigating phenomena not readily accessible in their cosmological counterparts. In this paper, we investigate the analog of cosmological particle creation in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe by numerically simulating a Bose-Einstein condensate with a time-dependent scattering length. In particular, we focus on a two-dimensional homogeneous condensate using the classical field method via the truncated Wigner approximation. We show that for various forms of the scaling function the particle production is consistent with the underlying theory in the long wavelength limit. In this context, we further discuss the implications of modified dispersion relations that arise from the microscopic theory of a weakly interacting Bose gas.
Cosmological reheating describes the transition of the postinflationary universe to a hot and thermal state. In order to shed light on the underlying dynamics of this process, we propose to quantum-simulate the reheating-like dynamics of a generic cosmological single-field model in an ultracold Bose gas. In our setup, the excitations on top of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate play the role of the particles produced by the decaying inflaton field after inflation. Expanding spacetime as well as the background oscillating inflaton field are mimicked in the nonrelativistic limit by a time dependence of the atomic interactions, which can be tuned experimentally via Feshbach resonances. As we illustrate by means of classical-statistical simulations for the case of two spatial dimensions, the dynamics of the atomic system exhibits the characteristic stages of far-from-equilibrium reheating, including the amplification of fluctuations via parametric instabilities and the subsequent turbulent transport of energy towards higher momenta. The transport is governed by a nonthermal fixed point showing universal self-similar time evolution as well as a transient regime of prescaling with time-dependent scaling exponents. While the classical-statistical simulations can capture only the earlier stages of the dynamics for weak couplings, the proposed experiment has the potential of exploring the evolution up to late times even beyond the weak coupling regime.
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We construct quantum field theory in an analog curved spacetime in Bose-Einstein condensates based on the Bogoliubov--de Gennes equations by exactly relating quantum particles in curved spacetime with Bogoliubov quasiparticle excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates. Here, we derive a simple formula relating the two, which can be used to calculate the particle creation spectrum by solving the time-dependent Bogoliubov--de Gennes equations. Using our formulation, we numerically investigate particle creation in an analog expanding universe which can be expressed as Bogoliubov quasiparticles in an expanding Bose-Einstein condensate. We obtain its spectrum, which follows the thermal Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, the temperature of which is experimentally attainable. Our derivation of the analogy is useful for general Bose-Einstein condensates and not limited to homogeneous ones, and our simulation is an example of particle creations by solving the Bogoliubov--de Gennes equation in an inhomogeneous condensate.