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Our Universe might be trapped in a metastable state, called a false vacuum, awaiting a cosmic transition to a more stable true vacuum. Physicists from the University of Leeds, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) have modeled this transition, demonstrating how bubbles of true vacuum form and interact. The findings, published in Nature Physics, could shed light on the Universe’s formation and fate in a few billion years.
The quantum field theory pioneer Sidney Coleman proposed nearly 50 years ago that our Universe might not have reached its most stable state but is trapped in a so-called false vacuum. As a result, the Universe as we know it could be on the verge of transitioning to an even more stable, true vacuum state. But this will by no means be a smooth transition. Instead, it could entail a catastrophic change in the Universe’s structure, a cosmic disaster. “We're talking about a process by which the Universe would completely change its structure. The fundamental constants could instantaneously change, and the world as we know it would collapse like a house of cards,” says the paper’s lead author, Zlatko Papić, Professor at the University of Leeds, UK. However, predicting the timeline is challenging, but is likely to span millions or even billions of years. “What we really need are controlled experiments to observe this process and determine its time scales.”
Now, an international collaboration including Papić, Jaka Vodeb from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, and Jean-Yves Desaules, a postdoc in Maksym Serbyn’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), has managed to model this process, called false vacuum decay. By redefining our understanding of quantum dynamics, the work could help advance quantum computing and its potential for solving some of the most challenging problems around the fundamental physics of the Universe.
A dance of bubbles and qubits
Many basic questions about the mechanism of false vacuum decay remain open to this day, including how the bubbles of true vacuum form, move, interact, and spread. To understand this elusive mechanism, the physicists had to develop the tools to demonstrate it in the lab. To this end, they used a type of quantum computer designed to solve complex optimization problems, i.e., finding the best solution from a set of possible solutions. This machine, a 5564-qubit quantum annealer designed by D-Wave Quantum Inc., allowed the team to model the vacuum states using qubits—the elementary building blocks of quantum computing. “By first placing these 5564 qubits into specific configurations representing the false vacuum, we could carefully control the conditions to trigger the formation of bubbles modeling the true vacuum,” says Desaules. “Bubble formation is the first step of false vacuum decay. We are very excited to have been able to observe it in real-time.”
The experiments changed the team’s perspective on the mechanism of false vacuum decay. In contrast to typically studied regimes, they saw that large quantized bubbles were essentially frozen in isolation. The only way for such large bubbles to evolve is to interact with a neighboring bubble. One of them can then shrink, while the other will grow. And once a bubble has shrunk to a very small size, it starts to ‘dance’ freely. “Our findings likely represent a new physical picture of false vacuum dynamics. We could envision the mechanism as a heterogeneous gas of bubbles where the larger, or heavier ones, directly interact with one another while the smaller, lighter ones bounce around freely,” says Desaules.
Helping advance quantum computing
The scientists underscore the quantum annealer’s potential in solving real-world, practical problems beyond the realm of theoretical physics. They say their study demonstrates how quantum annealers can do much more than the optimization tasks they were designed for, as they can also capture phenomena related to dynamics, like bubble formation. Vodeb concludes, “These breakthroughs not only push the boundaries of scientific knowledge but also pave the way for future technologies that could revolutionize fields such as cryptography, materials science, and energy-efficient computing.”
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Funding information
This project was supported by funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the project HPCQS (101018180), the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU), the Leverhulme Trust Research Leadership Award RL-2019-015, the EPSRC grants EP/R513258/1 and EP/W026848/1, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No.101034413.
Jaka Vodeb, Jean-Yves Desaules, Andrew Hallam, Andrea Rava, Gregor Humar, Dennis Willsch, Fengping Jin, Madita Willsch, Kristel Michielsen, and Zlatko Papić. 2025. Stirring the false vacuum via interacting quantized bubbles on a 5,564-qubit quantum annealer. Nature Physics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02765-w
https://ista.ac.at/en/research/serbyn-group/ "Quantum Dynamics and Condensed Matter Theory" research group at ISTA
Quantum annealer has simulated the fundamental process of false vacuum decay, opening the window to ...
© Zlatko Papic (Image created using Povray)
ISTA postdoc Jean-Yves Desaules
© ISTA
D-Wave quantum annealer in the JUNIQ building at Forschungszentrum Jülich.
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