Speaker
Description
Phononic excitations in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) exhibit dispersion relations analogous to those of relativistic scalar fields. It has been demonstrated that these fluctuations can be engineered to serve as quantum simulators for Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW) cosmologies [1]. We propose utilizing a BEC with long-range interactions induced by an optical cavity as a platform to simulate perturbations to the FLRW metric. Starting from the action describing a two-level cold atomic gas confined in a pumped optical cavity, we derive an analytical framework for long-wavelength excitations above the ground state. In the regime of weak cavity pumping, we identify a mapping between the emergent phononic dynamics and a cosmological spacetime with scalar perturbations.
[1] Viermann, C. et al. Nature 611, 260–264 (2022).
