Cold Atom Simulation of Interacting Relativistic Quantum Field Theories

Abstract

We demonstrate that Dirac fermions self-interacting or coupled to dynamic scalar fields can emerge in the low energy sector of designed bosonic and fermionic cold atom systems. We illustrate this with two examples defined in two spacetime dimensions. The first one is the self-interacting Thirring model. The second one is a model of Dirac fermions coupled to a dynamic scalar field that gives rise to the Gross-Neveu model. The proposed cold atom experiments can be used to probe spectral or correlation properties of interacting quantum field theories thereby presenting an alternative to lattice gauge theory simulations.

Optical-lattice Hamiltonians for relativistic quantum electrodynamics

“…They also appear in a square lattice with appropriate complex hopping matrix elements [21]. This has led to a number of proposals to emulate relativistic physics with cold atoms [21][22][23][24][25][26]. Here we extend these previous proposals by showing how to emulate QED3 with cold atoms.…”

Ultracold quantum gases and lattice systems: quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories

“…As usual for quantum systems, by repeating identically prepared experiments many times, one obtains physical results by averaging over them. Quantum simulator constructions already exist for several bosonic [34][35][36] and fermionic [37][38][39][40] field theories. Quantum simulators have also been constructed for quantum particles interacting with classical gauge fields.…”

Towards quantum simulating QCD

“…Proposals for quantum simulator constructions already exist for some simple bosonic [26,27,28] and fermionic [29,30,31,32] field theories. Hence it is natural to ask whether our understanding of strongly coupled systems in nuclear and particle physics may benefit from quantum simulation.…”