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arXiv · 1903.09667

Exceeding the Sauter-Schwinger limit of pair production with a quantum gas

Alina M. Piñeiro Escalera·Dina Genkina·Mingwu Lu·I. B. Spielman
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Abstract

We quantum-simulated particle-antiparticle pair production with a bosonic quantum gas in an optical lattice by emulating the requisite 1d Dirac equation and uniform electric field. We emulated field strengths far in excess of Sauter-Schwinger's limit for pair production in quantum electrodynamics, and therefore readily produced particles from "the Dirac vacuum" in quantitative agreement with theory. The observed process is equivalently described by Landau-Zener tunneling familiar in the atomic physics context.

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Alina M. Piñeiro Escalera, Dina Genkina, Mingwu Lu, I. B. Spielman. 2019-03-22. Exceeding the Sauter-Schwinger limit of pair production with a quantum gas. https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.09667

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