Cold atom simulation of interacting relativistic quantum field theories

Abstract

We demonstrate that Dirac fermions self-interacting or coupled to dynamic scalar fields can emerge in the low energy sector of designed bosonic and fermionic cold atom systems. We illustrate this with two examples defined in two spacetime dimensions. The first one is the self-interacting Thirring model. The second one is a model of Dirac fermions coupled to a dynamic scalar field that gives rise to the Gross-Neveu model. The proposed cold atom experiments can be used to probe spectral or correlation properties of interacting quantum field theories thereby presenting an alternative to lattice gauge theory simulations.