Gerard Valentí Rojas - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Spain
The laws of quantum mechanics have helped scientists to unravel the behaviour of nature at its most fundamental scales. However, quantum phenomena are often difficult to understand and simulations have historically provided a useful framework for their study. Nevertheless, when dealing with large quantum systems or real-time dynamics, the computational cost of numerical simulations can become unfeasible. A proposal to face this problem is the notion of a quantum simulator, a controllable device governed itself by the laws of quantum mechanics that allows to replicate the conditions of some systems from condensed matter or high energy physics, among others. An intriguing application of quantum simulators is the study of the dynamics of particles in curved gravitational backgrounds. Our research is aimed to gain some insight into how Dirac fermions behave in an homogeneous, isotropic and expanding (2+1)-d universe. The implementation of such a system using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice could lead to the observation of exotic effects such as a particle horizon or the cosmological creation of particles. This could pave the way for a novel approach to problems typically restricted to high energy particle physics or cosmology.