Simulating quantum effects of cosmological expansion using a static ion trap

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel ion trap experimental setup that simulates quantum effects of cosmological expansion, such as the Gibbons-Hawking effect and inflationary structures, by encoding curvature effects in laser modulation.

Contribution

It presents a simplified and more versatile method for simulating expanding universe effects in trapped ions by associating laboratory time with conformal time, enhancing the analog gravity approach.

Findings

Proposes a new ion trap simulation of cosmological quantum effects.

Enables modeling of inflationary structure formation.

Simplifies experimental requirements for analog gravity experiments.

Abstract

We propose a new experimental testbed that uses ions in the collective ground state of a static trap for studying the analog of quantum-field effects in cosmological spacetimes, including the Gibbons-Hawking effect for a single detector in de Sitter spacetime, as well as the possibility of modeling inflationary structure formation and the entanglement signature of de Sitter spacetime. To date, proposals for using trapped ions in analog gravity experiments have simulated the effect of gravity on the field modes by directly manipulating the ions' motion. In contrast, by associating laboratory time with conformal time in the simulated universe, we can encode the full effect of curvature in the modulation of the laser used to couple the ions' vibrational motion and electronic states. This model simplifies the experimental requirements for modeling the analog of an expanding universe using trapped ions and enlarges the validity of the ion-trap analogy to a wide range of interesting cases.