2024/11/19 by Zi-Hang Zhu, Zhu, Zi-Hang, Ying Liu +21 · 18 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.12565
openalex publication_date 2024/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the context of quantum electrodynamics, the decay of false vacuum leads to the production of electron-positron pair, a phenomenon known as the Schwinger effect. In practical experimental scenarios, producing a pair requires an extremely strong electric field, thus suppressing the production rate and making this process very challenging to observe. Here we report an experimental investigation, in a cold-atom quantum simulator, of the effect of the background field on pair production from the infinite-mass vacuum in a 1+1D U(1) lattice gauge theory. The ability to tune the background field allows us to study pair production in a large production rate regime. Furthermore, we find that the energy spectrum of the time-evolved observables in the zero mass limit displays excitation peaks analogous to bosonic modes in the Schwinger model. Our work opens the door to quantum-simulation experiments that can controllably tune the production of pairs and manipulate their far-from-equilibrium dynamics.