Towards the cold atom analog false vacuum
arXiv:1712.02356 · doi:10.1007/JHEP07(2018)014
Abstract
Analog condensed matter systems present an exciting opportunity to simulate early Universe models in table-top experiments. We consider a recent proposal for an analog condensed matter experiment to simulate the relativistic quantum decay of the false vacuum. In the proposed experiment, two ultra-cold condensates are coupled via a time-varying radio-frequency field. The relative phase of the two condensates in this system is approximately described by a relativistic scalar field with a potential possessing a series of false and true vacuum local minima. If the system is set up in a false vacuum, it would then decay to a true vacuum via quantum mechanical tunnelling. Should such an experiment be realized, it would be possible to answer a number of open questions regarding non-perturbative phenomena in quantum field theory and early Universe cosmology. In this paper, we illustrate a possible obstruction: the time-varying coupling that is invoked to create a false vacuum for the long-wavelength modes of the condensate leads to a destabilization of shorter wavelength modes within the system via parametric resonance. We focus on an idealized setup in which the two condensates have identical properties and identical background densities. Describing the system by the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (GPE), we use the machinery of Floquet theory to perform a linear stability analysis, calculating the wavenumber associated with the first instability band for a variety of experimental parameters. However, we demonstrate that, by tuning the frequency of the time-varying coupling, it may be possible to push the first instability band outside the validity of the GPE, where dissipative effects are expected to damp any instabilities. This provides a viable range of experimental parameters to perform analog experiments of false vacuum decay.
v1: 30 pages + appendices, 9 figures, to be submitted to JHEP; v2: Matches published version. Minor revisions, results unchanged
References in corpus (12)
- Periodically-driven quantum systems: Effective Hamiltonians and engineered gauge fields
- Measurement of stimulated Hawking emission in an analogue system
- Nonperturbative Dynamics Of Reheating After Inflation: A Review
- An acoustic analog to the dynamical Casimir effect in a Bose-Einstein condensate
- A rapidly expanding Bose-Einstein condensate: an expanding universe in the lab
- Analogue model of a FRW universe in Bose-Einstein condensates: Application of the classical field method
- Towards observable signatures of other bubble universes
- Cosmological particle production in emergent rainbow spacetimes
- Fate of the false vacuum: towards realization with ultra-cold atoms
- The universe on a table top: engineering quantum decay of a relativistic scalar field from a metastable vacuum
- Eternal Inflation, past and future
- Oscillons in coupled Bose-Einstein condensates
Cited by in corpus (32)
- Quantum Gases in Optical Boxes
- A New Semiclassical Picture of Vacuum Decay
- Simulating seeded vacuum decay in a cold atom system
- Observation of false vacuum decay via bubble formation in ferromagnetic superfluids
- Unified Superfluid Dark Sector
- Effective picture of bubble expansion
- Nonlinear Dynamics of the Cold Atom Analog False Vacuum
- Simulating cosmological supercooling with a cold atom system
- The fate of the false vacuum: Finite temperature, entropy and topological phase in quantum simulations of the early universe
- Real-time dynamics of false vacuum decay
- False vacuum decay in an ultracold spin-1 Bose gas
- Vorticity in analogue spacetimes
- Bubble Clustering in Cosmological First Order Phase Transitions
- Inflationary Dynamics and Particle Production in a Toroidal Bose-Einstein Condensate
- Analog vacuum decay from vacuum initial conditions
- False vacuum decay rates, more precisely
- Bubble velocities and oscillon precursors in first-order phase transitions
- Supercooling of the A phase of He
- Mass Renormalization in Lattice Simulations of False Vacuum Decay
- False vacuum decay and nucleation dynamics in neutral atom systems
- Superfluids, Fluctuations and Disorder
- Generalized cold-atom simulators for vacuum decay
- Occurrence of semiclassical vacuum decay
- Bubble nucleation in a cold spin 1 gas
- Parametrized Path Approach to Vacuum Decay
- Particle production and hadronization temperature in the massive Schwinger model
- Escaping fronts in local quenches of a confining spin chain
- Bubbles in a box: Eliminating edge nucleation in cold-atom simulators of vacuum decay
- Primordial Black Holes and Higgs Vacuum Decay
- Vacuum decay and quadratic gravity: the massive case
- Nondestructive optomechanical detection scheme for Bose-Einstein condensates
- Temperature driven false vacuum decay in coherently coupled Bose superfluids