Pitaevskii Center on Bose-Einstein Condensation

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. 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.

References:
False vacuum decay via bubble formation in ferromagnetic superfluids
Alessandro Zenesini, Anna Berti, Riccardo Cominotti, Chiara Rogora, Ian G. Moss, Thomas P. Billam, Iacopo Carusotto, Giacomo Lamporesi, Alessio Recati, Gabriele Ferrari
arxiv.2305.05225.
Nature Physics 20(4), 558(2024).

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