Cosmological particle creation in the lab?

TL;DR

This paper discusses cosmological particle creation from quantum vacuum due to universe expansion and explores potential laboratory analogues to observe this fundamental quantum effect.

Contribution

It provides a brief overview of cosmological particle creation and proposes a possible experimental analogue in laboratory settings.

Findings

Cosmological particle creation is linked to universe expansion and quantum field theory.

Potential laboratory experiments could simulate this effect.

This phenomenon may be observable through analogue experiments.

Abstract

One of the most striking examples for the production of particles out of the quantum vacuum due to external conditions is cosmological particle creation, which is caused by the expansion or contraction of the Universe. Already in 1939, Schr\"odinger understood that the cosmic evolution could lead to a mixing of positive and negative frequencies and that this "would mean production or annihilation of matter, merely by the expansion". Later this phenomenon was derived via more modern techniques of quantum field theory in curved space-times by Parker (who apparently was not aware of Schr\"odinger's work) and subsequently has been studied in numerous publications. Even though cosmological particle creation typically occurs on extremely large length scales, it is one of the very few examples for such fundamental effects where we actually may have observational evidence: According to the inflationary model of cosmology, the seeds for the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and basically all large scale structures stem from this effect. In this Chapter, we shall provide a brief discussion of this phenomenon and sketch a possibility for an experimental realization via an analogue in the laboratory.