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Physica Scripta

Dynamical Casimir effect in ultra-cold matter with a time-dependent effective charge

V. V. Dodonov, José Tito Mendonça

Published Apr 1, 2014• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We propose a new scheme for observing the phonon analogue of the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) in a gas of laser-cooled atoms. Namely, the emission of phonon pairs from vacuum can happen due to periodic variations of the effective charge of atoms, caused by a small intensity modulation of laser beams used for cooling and trapping the atoms. Then the 'temporal Bragg diffraction' results in phonon backscattering in time, equivalent to the DCE.

DOI
10.1088/0031-8949/2014/t160/014008

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We propose a new scheme for observing the phonon analogue of the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) in a gas of laser-cooled atoms. Namely, the emission of phonon pairs from vacuum can happen due to periodic variations of the effective charge of atoms, caused by a small intensity modulation of laser beams used for cooling and trapping the atoms. Then the 'temporal Bragg diffraction' results in phonon backscattering in time, equivalent to the DCE.
We present a theory of the density correlations that appear in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate as a consequence of the emission of correlated pairs of Bogoliubov phonons by a time-dependent atom-atom scattering length. This effect can be considered as a condensed matter analog of the dynamical Casimir effect of quantum field theory. Different regimes as a function of the temporal shape of the modulation are identified and a simple physical picture of the phenomenon is discussed. Analytical expressions for the density correlation function are provided for the most significant limiting cases. This theory is able to explain some unexpected features recently observed in numerical studies of analog Hawking radiation from acoustic black holes.
When a two-level atom interacts resonantly with a coherent electromagnetic field, the polarizability of the atom can be modulated due to the Rabi oscillations between atomic levels. We show that in the quantum vacuum, such a time-dependent atomic polarizability can lead to a resonant generation of photon pairs, a phenomenon reminiscent of photon emission in the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE). Specifically, we employ a dressing transformation to obtain an effective Hamiltonian which uncovers a polarizability-dependent parametric interaction corresponding to DCE. We determine the photon emission rate and indicate features of DCE photon pairs distinguishable from regular fluorescence photons.
Quantum vacuum fluctuations are a direct manifestation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) allows for the observation of these vacuum fluctuations by turning them into real, observable photons. However, the observation of this effect in a cavity QED experiment would require the rapid variation of the length of a cavity with relativistic velocities, a daunting challenge. Here, we propose a quantum simulation of the DCE using an ion chain confined in a segmented ion trap. We derive a discrete model that enables us to map the dynamics of the multimode radiation field inside a variable-length cavity to radial phonons of the ion crystal. We perform a numerical study comparing the ion-chain quantum simulation under realistic experimental parameters to an ideal Fabry–Perot cavity, demonstrating the viability of the mapping. The proposed quantum simulator, therefore, allows for probing the photon (respectively phonon) production caused by the DCE on the single photon level.
When the mechanical oscillator is initially in an excited state, its free evolution, driven by the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE), leads to the generation of radiation in the vacuum, analogous to the spontaneous emission of an excited atom. In the regime where the loss rates are lower than the corresponding frequency splittings, reversible energy exchange can occur between the excited mechanical oscillator and the vacuum cavity field (i.e., vacuum Casimir-Rabi oscillations). By using the quantum trajectory approach, we show that n -photon/ n -phonon emission can be achieved by opening dissipative channels for these Casimir-Rabi oscillations. Simulation results from 10 5 quantum trajectories demonstrate that the purities of two-photon emission, two-phonon emission, and three-phonon emission can reach 0.92, 0.94, and 0.95, respectively. These values are observed in Casimir-Rabi oscillations between the three-phonon state and the two-photon state in a weak optomechanical coupling. This phenomenon could provide insights into the physical characteristics of photon and phonon emission in the DCE.
Quantum vacuum fluctuations are a direct manifestation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) allows for the observation of these vacuum fluctuations by turning them into real, observable photons. However, the observation of this effect in a cavity QED experiment would require the rapid variation of the length of a cavity with relativistic velocities, a daunting challenge. Here, we propose a quantum simulation of the DCE using an ion chain confined in a segmented ion trap. We derive a discrete model that enables us to map the dynamics of the multimode radiation field inside a variable-length cavity to radial phonons of the ion crystal. We perform a numerical study comparing the ion-chain quantum simulation under realistic experimental parameters to an ideal Fabry–Perot cavity, demonstrating the viability of the mapping. The proposed quantum simulator, therefore, allows for probing the photon (respectively phonon) production caused by the DCE on the single photon level.
We present a detailed investigation of one of the cleanest examples where it is possible to detect the “analog” Dynamical Casimir Effect in a Bose–Einstein condensate: an ultracold atom gas in toroidal confinement. The analytical solution of the time dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation allows to follow the time evolution of the phonon spectrum and shows that periodic oscillations of the ring radius do not induce modulations in the density profile but give rise to the mixing of clockwise and anticlockwise modes, leading to the creation of pairs of entangled phonons in a squeezed vacuum state, if the drive frequency equals twice the frequency of the phonon mode. The Dynamical Casimir Effect is predicted to occur in the weakly interacting regime, where the Gross–Pitaevskii equation provides a faithful description of the many body dynamics. In the strong coupling limit, when the ultracold gas behaves as hard core bosons, the effect disappears and no amplification occurs. The presence of symmetry-breaking perturbations and finite temperature effects are also considered, as well as the comparison with the classical phenomenon of parametric amplification.