Scientists have conducted a demonstration of the reaction of the birth and annihilation of pair electron and its antiparticle in the Schwinger model.
Physicists from Austria and Germany first used a quantum computer to simulate the interactions of elementary particles by the methods of lattice gauge theory. The work of scientists allows in real time to monitor the birth and destruction (annihilation) of a pair of particle-antiparticle in the physical vacuum. A study published in the journal Nature.
Scientists have conducted a demonstration of the reaction of the birth and annihilation of pair electron and its antiparticle (positron) in the Schwinger model. A quantum simulator consists of four calcium ions in an electromagnetic trap and controlled laser pulses. Each pair of ions is a pair particle-antiparticle.
“We use laser pulses to simulate the electromagnetic field in vacuum. Then we can see how pairs of particles are created by quantum fluctuations of the energy field. Looking at the fluorescence of the ion, we see, was created particles and antiparticles. We can change the parameters of a quantum system that allows to observe and examine the dynamics of creating a pair,” — said study co-author Esteban Martinez.
The main difficulty in the study was the selection of a suitable quantum Protocol. The researchers hope that their simulation would be a good addition to costly experiments in elementary particle physics, in particular, experiments at CERN. In the future, physicists plan to simulate quantum entanglement of pair of particles. The idea of creating a quantum simulator was presented by the American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman.
The Schwinger model is two-dimensional. There is one coordinate is spatial and the second Euclidean time (normal time coordinator, which made wikowski shift — multiply it by the imaginary unit). Product particle annihilation is a massive photon (which in four-dimensional space-time must be massless). The Schwinger model is used in quantum field theory as a simple example, in which possible understanding of limiting cases of more complex theories. Computer simulation in the theory of Schwinger conveniently carried out in the framework of the lattice approach in which space-time is divided into discrete cells.
