English

Observation of false vacuum decay via bubble formation in ferromagnetic superfluids

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2024-07-16 v1 Quantum Gases Statistical Mechanics High Energy Physics - Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

In quantum field theory, the decay of an extended metastable state into the real ground state is known as ``false vacuum decay'' and it takes place via the nucleation of spatially localized bubbles. Despite the large theoretical effort to estimate the nucleation rate, experimental observations were still missing. Here, we observe bubble nucleation in isolated and highly controllable superfluid atomic systems, and we find good agreement between our results, numerical simulations and instanton theory opening the way to the emulation of out-of-equilibrium quantum field phenomena in atomic systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.05225,
  title  = {Observation of false vacuum decay via bubble formation in ferromagnetic superfluids},
  author = {Alessandro Zenesini and Anna Berti and Riccardo Cominotti and Chiara Rogora and Ian G. Moss and Thomas P. Billam and Iacopo Carusotto and Giacomo Lamporesi and Alessio Recati and Gabriele Ferrari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.05225},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

12 pages, 9 figures