2025/02/24 by João Barata, E. Rico, Barata, João +1 · 9 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.17558
openalex publication_date 2025/02/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
In analogy to high-energy nuclear scattering experiments, we study a real-time scattering process between a propagating state and a dense target in 1+1-d massive QED. In our setup, we identify three distinct regimes that qualitatively characterize the evolution: for a dilute medium, the incoming probe state evolves nearly ballistically; in an intermediate setting, it traverses the matter, locally exciting it; and for dense targets, one approaches a black-disk limit, where the matter acts as a strong wall potential. We find evidence that the probe's energy loss rate scales linearly with the path length in the medium, and we study how the entanglement entropy reveals the mixing between the probe and medium states. With the goal of one day replicating high-energy nuclear experiments in quantum devices, we briefly discuss how the current tensor network-based simulations can be translated to a quantum simulator.