Fate of the false vacuum: towards realization with ultra-cold atoms

Understand

Quantum decay of a relativistic scalar field from a false vacuum is a fundamental idea in quantum field theory.

• It is relevant to models of the early Universe, where the nucleation of bubbles gives rise to an inflationary universe and the creation of matter.
• Here we propose a laboratory test using an experimental model of an ultra-cold spinor Bose gas.
• A false vacuum for the relative phase of two spin components, serving as the unstable scalar field, is generated by means of a modulated radio-frequency coupling of the spin components.