Mimicking interacting relativistic theories with stationary pulses of light

Abstract

One of the most well known relativistic field theory models is the Thirring model (TM). Its realization can demonstrate the famous prediction for the renormalization of mass due to interactions. However, experimental verification of the latter requires complex accelerator experiments whereas analytical solutions of the model can be extremely cumbersome to obtain. In this work, following Feynman's original proposal, we propose a alternative quantum system as a simulator of the TM dynamics. Here the relativistic particles are mimicked, counter-intuitively, by polarized photons in a quantum nonlinear medium. We show that the entire set of regimes of the Thirring model -- bosonic or fermionic, and massless or massive -- can be faithfully reproduced using coherent light trapping techniques. The sought after correlations' scalings can be extracted by simple probing of the coherence functions of the light using standard optical techniques.

6 pages with 3 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Non-Abelian gauge fields and topological insulators in shaken optical lattices
• Crystallization of strongly interacting photons in a nonlinear optical fiber
• Cold atom simulation of interacting relativistic quantum field theories

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Rydberg excitation of cold atoms inside a hollow core fiber
• Atomic mercury vapor inside a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber
• Simultaneous Trapping of Two Optical Pulses in an Atomic Ensemble as Stationary Light Pulses
• Trapping a Free-propagating Single-photon into an Atomic Ensemble as a Quantum Stationary Light Pulse
• Realizing topological relativistic dynamics with slow light polaritons at room temperature