Journal
ANNALS OF PHYSICS
Volume 374, Issue -, Pages 162-178Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.aop.2016.08.013
Keywords
Optical simulation; Coupled waveguide array; Curved spacetime; Dirac equation; Particle creation
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Funding
- National Research Foundation
- Ministry of Education Singapore [MOE2012-T3-1-009]
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When quantum fields are coupled to gravitational fields, spontaneous particle creation may occur similarly to when they are coupled to external electromagnetic fields. A gravitational field can be incorporated as a background spacetime if the back-action of matter on the field can be neglected, resulting in modifications of the Dirac or Klein-Gordon equations for elementary fermions and bosons respectively. The semi-classical description predicts particle creation in many situations, including the expanding-universe scenario, near the event horizon of a black hole (the Hawking effect), and an accelerating observer in flat spacetime (the Unruh effect). In this work, we give a pedagogical introduction to the Dirac equation in a general 2D spacetime and show examples of spinor wave packet dynamics in flat and curved background spacetimes. In particular, we cover the phenomenon of particle creation in a time-dependent metric. Photonic analogs of these effects are then proposed, where classical light propagating in an array of coupled waveguides provides a visualisation of the Dirac spinor propagating in a curved 2D spacetime background. The extent to which such a single-particle description can be said to mimic particle creation is discussed. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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