Seminar by Christian Schmidt, from the University of Jena, Germany

Seminar by Christian Schmidt, from the University of Jena, Germany, on Friday 14 June 2024 at 10:30am in the Boardroom of the Institut d'Optique Graduate School in Palaiseau.

Abstract: "The production of quantum field excitations or particles in cosmological spacetimes is a hallmark prediction of curved quantum field theory. As the generation of cosmological perturbations from microscopic quantum fluctuations in the early universe can be mapped to the dynamics of a scalar quantum field in a time-dependent spacetime, the latter model has sparked numerous theoretical investigations.

Here, we formulate a mapping between cosmological particle production in a (D+1)-dimensional spacetime and one-dimensional quantum mechanical scattering problems.

Through rapid technological advancements in recent years and an already established analogy, experimental research on cosmological particle production can be conducted in well-controlled laboratory environments, where interacting Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) play a prominent role.

Through these mappings, 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 hallmark expansions to periodic modulations.

The investigated cosmologies and their scattering analogues are tuned to be implemented in a (2+1)-dimensional quantum field simulator."