Abstract

We discuss the possibility of exploiting polariton-exciton physics as an analogue experimental tool to study challenging ideas and existing problems arising in the context of gravity theory and theoretical cosmology. We search for cosmology analogues with specific focus on simulating non-equilibrium dynamics across cosmological phase transitions in laboratory as well as employing optical analogue horizons in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and signatures of white hole radiation to study gravitational and cosmological processes. Our analysis aims to uncover conceptual similarities between condensed matter systems and various phenomena in the Early Universe such as the symmetry breaking of the vacuum energy, spontaneous production of particles, false vacuum and cosmic inflation together with a number of unsolved cosmological problems.

Highlights

  • Latest theoretical and experimental advances in the physics of strong light-matter coupling, both in the classical and the quantum regimes and more recent, in the exciton-polariton research makes possible a range of new interdisciplinary forefront research topics with fundamental purposes in cosmology, gravitation and astrophysics

  • The simulation of cosmological scenarios and non-gravitational analogue models of large-scale cosmic processes were given much less attention in laboratories Several cosmological phenomena may be simulated in the laboratory [2], such as cosmological particle creation, caused by the expansion or contraction of the Universe, dynamical quantum phase transitions, soliton and topological defect formation that may have affected the dynamics of the Early Universe, or the presence of Hawking radiation arising from artificial event horizons, Bogoliubov-Cerenkov emission of soundwaves in bulk dilute superfluids, vacuum instability Penrose process, Unruh effect, Eardley instability, Gibbons-Hawking effect, dynamical Casimir emission and Schwinger mechanism

  • Quantum collective dynamics in light-matter systems and quantum fluids of light [3] such as exciton-polariton condensates are novel convenient tools to investigate phase transitions, find new universality classes for bosonic and fermionic fields, simulate solitons and topological structures occurring in the symmetry breaking phase transitions equivalent to cosmological strings or other defects in the Early Universe

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Summary

Introduction

Latest theoretical and experimental advances in the physics of strong light-matter coupling, both in the classical and the quantum regimes and more recent, in the exciton-polariton research makes possible a range of new interdisciplinary forefront research topics with fundamental purposes in cosmology, gravitation and astrophysics. Analogue models of gravity [1] were inspired by various concepts from general relativity, and especially by the equivalence of optical media and space– time geometries Such models have already being realized in recent laboratory experiments around the world. The analogy between phonons in expanding BECs and quantum fields in a universe undergoing an accelerated expansion introduces an effective tool to study effects such as freezing of modes after horizon crossing and the amplification of quantum fluctuations. Such amplification mechanism was predicted to be responsible for the formation of the initial inhomogeneities as the first seeds for the formation of cosmic structures such as galaxies. A number of recent results in quantum fluids and excitonpolariton physics can be used as a test-bed capable of simulating a variety of cosmological toy models, with possibilities for recreating fundamental effects relevant for cosmological phase transitions, cosmic inflation, black holes and other gravitational scenarios in the laboratory

Cosmology analogues
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