Probing Lorentz-Invariance-Violation Induced Nonthermal Unruh Effect in Quasi-Two-Dimensional Dipolar Condensates

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experimental setup using dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates to observe a Lorentz-violation induced nonthermal Unruh effect, enabling investigation of the effect's robustness to Lorentz symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analogue Unruh effect in dipolar BECs with tunable Lorentz-violating spectra, providing a platform to test fundamental physics concepts.

Findings

Feasibility of observing Unruh effect near sound speed in BECs.

Engineerable deviations from Lorentz invariance via dipolar interactions.

Potential to experimentally test Unruh effect robustness to Lorentz symmetry breaking.

Abstract

The Unruh effect states an accelerated particle detector registers a thermal response when moving through the Minkowski vacuum, and its thermal feature is believed to be inseparable from Lorentz symmetry: Without the latter, the former disappears. Here we propose to observe analogue circular Unruh effect using an impurity atom in a quasi-two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with dominant dipole-dipole interactions between atoms or molecules in the ultracold gas. Quantum fluctuations in the condensate possess a Bogoliubov spectrum $\omega_{\mathbf k}=c_0|{\mathbf k}|f(\hbar\,c_0|{\mathbf k}|/M_\ast)$, working as an analogue Lorentz-violating quantum field with the Lorentz-breaking scale $M_\ast$, and the impurity acts as an effective Unruh-DeWitt detector thereof. When the detector travels close to the sound speed, observation of the Unruh effect in our quantum fluid platform becomes experimentally feasible. In particular, the deviation of the Bogoliubov spectrum from the Lorentz-invariant case is highly engineerable through the relative strength of the dipolar and contact interactions, and thus a viable laboratory tool is furnished to experimentally investigate whether the thermal characteristic of Unruh effect is robust to the breaking of Lorentz symmetry.