Analogue of cosmological particle creation in an ion trap

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that phonons in a dynamically controlled ion trap mimic quantum fields in an expanding universe, proposing a feasible experimental scheme to observe cosmological particle creation analogues.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analogy between ion trap phonons and cosmological quantum fields, and proposes an experimental detection method for cosmological particle creation in current ion trap technology.

Findings

Phonons in a time-dependent ion trap emulate quantum fields in an expanding universe.

A detection scheme for cosmological particle creation using side-band measurements is feasible.

The quantum nature of particle creation can be distinguished from classical effects through two-phonon amplitude measurements.

Abstract

We study phonons in a dynamical chain of ions confined by a trap with a time-dependent (axial) potential strength and demonstrate that they behave in the same way as quantum fields in an expanding/contracting universe. Based on this analogy, we present a scheme for the detection of the analogue of cosmological particle creation which should be feasible with present-day technology. In order to test the quantum nature of the particle creation mechanism and to distinguish it from classical effects such as heating, we propose to measure the two-phonon amplitude via the $2^{\rm nd}$ red side-band and to compare it with the one-phonon amplitude ($1^{\rm st}$ red side-band). PACS: 04.62.+v, 98.80.-k, 42.50.Vk, 32.80.Pj.