Abstract.
Cosmological particle production arising from the expansion of spacetime is a well-established prediction of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes. This mechanism offers an appealing and universal way for generating dark matter in the early Universe. However, such scenarios are hard to access experimentally. Analogue gravity platforms—or quantum field simulators—offer a promising route to explore such physics in the laboratory.
In this talk, I will show how cosmological production in the early Universe can naturally account for the observed dark matter abundance, without relying on any interactions beyond gravity. I will then demonstrate how the dynamics of quantum fields in a cosmological background can be realised in Bose-Einstein condensates, presenting recent experimental data. Finally, I will discuss how these systems can serve as relativistic quantum information simulators, enabling the exploration of entanglement or other fundamental properties of quantum field theories in non-trivial backgrounds.
(The slides will be available here)