A cloud of ultracold gases obtained in the laboratory helps to study the universe, in particular the mechanisms that make it stable, to verify the validity of current theories that describe this stability, also providing useful elements for biochemistry and quantum computing.
Published in the journal Nature Physics, the research was born from the collaboration between the National Institute of Optics of the National Research Council, the Department of Physics of the University of Trento, the National Center of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics Tifpa and the British University of Newcastle.
In the laboratories of the Bose Einstein Pitaevskii Center for Condensate in Trento, researchers prepared a cloud of ultracold sodium atoms in an initial state, simulating a false vacuum state.
By varying the experimental parameters, they then observed how long after the atoms changed configuration, reaching the true vacuum state.
The next step was to verify whether the behavior observed in the atoms was in line with that described by the theories.
"Ultracold atoms are confirmed once again as an ideal platform for the quantum simulation of both the extremely small and the extremely large", observes the first author of the research, explains Alessandro Zenesini of the Cnr-Ino, who worked on the study with Giacomo Lamporesi and Alessio Recati of the same Institute.
"The theories of false vacuum decay were theorized fifty years ago and almost exclusively with in mind processes typical of high energies, sub-nuclear physics and cosmology", observes another author of the research, Gabriele Ferrari, of the University ' of Trento.
"The results obtained - he continues - therefore represent a first step towards the validation of hitherto abstract theories and initiate new lines of experimental research on the various aspects of the formation of the true vacuum bubble and its behaviour, with implications also in the field of biochemistry and quantum computing".
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