Chinese scientists realize quantum simulation of the Unruh effect
Quantum mechanics and relativity theory are two pillars of modern physics. With their amalgamation, many novel phenomena have been identified. For example, the Unruh effect is one of the most significant outcomes of quantum field theory. This effect serves as an important tool to investigate phenomena such as thermal emission of particles from black holes and cosmological horizons. It has been 40 years since the discovery of the Unruh effect, but this effect is too weak to be observed using current techniques. To address this issue, quantum simulators may provide a promising approach. Quantum simulation is widely applied for simulating the quantum systems that cannot be efficiently simulated by classical computers or are not directly tractable by the current techniques in the laboratory.