Detection of acceleration radiation in a Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper proposes methods to detect the Unruh effect using Bose-Einstein condensates, employing atom dots and optical lattices to observe phonon radiation caused by acceleration, with potential for experimental verification.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to simulate scalar fields in BECs and suggests feasible experimental setups for observing Unruh radiation effects.

Findings

Unruh's effect can be simulated in BECs using Bogoliubov vacuum.

Dispersive effects influence the thermalization of acceleration radiation.

Current experimental methods could detect Unruh acceleration radiation.

Abstract

We propose and study methods for detecting the Unruh effect in a Bose-Einstein condensate. The Bogoliubov vacuum of a Bose-Einstein condensate is used here to simulate a scalar field-theory, and accelerated atom dots or optical lattices as means for detecting phonon radiation due to acceleration effects. We study Unruh's effect for linear acceleration and circular acceleration. In particular, we study the dispersive effects of the Bogoliubov spectrum on the ideal case of exact thermalization. Our results suggest that Unruh's acceleration radiation can be tested using current accessible experimental methods.