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PUBLICATIONS

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

Published

Author(s)

Alina M. Pineiro Escalera, Mingwu Lu, Dina Genkina, Ian Spielman

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.
Citation
New Journal of Physics
Pub Type
Journals

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Local Download
Physics and Atomic / molecular / quantum

Citation

Pineiro Escalera, A. , Lu, M. , Genkina, D. and Spielman, I. (2019), Exceeding the Sauter-Schwinger limit of pair production with a quantum gas, New Journal of Physics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=927722 (Accessed October 9, 2025)

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Created September 20, 2019, Updated October 12, 2021
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