Cosmological particle production in a quantum field simulator as a quantum mechanical scattering problem

TL;DR

This paper maps cosmological particle production to a quantum scattering problem in a Bose-Einstein condensate, enabling simulation of early universe phenomena through a quantum field simulator.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mapping between cosmological particle creation and non-relativistic scattering problems, facilitating quantum simulation of cosmological scenarios.

Findings

Mapping allows intuitive understanding of structure formation.

Simulation of various cosmological models in a 2+1D quantum field system.

Potential for experimental realization of early universe physics.

Abstract

The production of quantum field excitations or particles in cosmological spacetimes is a hallmark prediction of curved quantum field theory. The generation of cosmological perturbations from quantum fluctuations in the early universe constitutes an important application. The problem can be quantum-simulated in terms of structure formation in an interacting Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with time-dependent s-wave scattering length. Here, we explore a mapping between cosmological particle production in general (D+1)-dimensional spacetimes and scattering problems described by the non-relativistic stationary Schr\"odinger equation in one dimension. Through this mapping, intuitive explanations for emergent spatial structures in both the BEC and the cosmological system can be obtained for a large class of analogue cosmological scenarios, ranging from power-law expansions to periodic modulations. The investigated cosmologies and their scattering analogues are tuned to be implemented in a (2+1)-dimensional quantum field simulator.