TY  - JOUR
ID  - discovery10185018
N1  - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images
or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license,
users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
JF  - Physical Review D
AV  - public
N2  - Ultracold atomic gases can undergo phase transitions that mimic relativistic vacuum decay, allowing us
to empirically test early Universe physics in tabletop experiments. We investigate the physics of these
analog systems, going beyond previous analyses of the classical equations of motion to study quantum
fluctuations in the cold-atom false vacuum. We show that the fluctuation spectrum of this vacuum state
agrees with the usual relativistic result in the regime where the classical analogy holds, providing further
evidence for the suitability of these systems for studying vacuum decay. Using a suite of semiclassical
lattice simulations, we simulate bubble nucleation from this analog vacuum state in a 1D homonuclear
potassium-41 mixture, finding qualitative agreement with instanton predictions. We identify realistic
parameters for this system that will allow us to study vacuum decay with current experimental capabilities,
including a prescription for efficiently scanning over decay rates, and show that this setup will probe the
quantum (rather than thermal) decay regime at temperatures T ? 10 nK. Our results help lay the
groundwork for using upcoming cold-atom experiments as a new probe of nonperturbative early
Universe physics.
IS  - 2
PB  - American Physical Society (APS)
A1  - Jenkins, Alexander C
A1  - Braden, Jonathan
A1  - Peiris, Hiranya V
A1  - Pontzen, Andrew
A1  - Johnson, Matthew C
A1  - Weinfurtner, Silke
VL  - 109
Y1  - 2024/01/04/
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.109.023506
TI  - Analog vacuum decay from vacuum initial conditions
ER  -