Lab Direct Imaging Reveals Quantum Vacuum Fluctuations in a Cold-Atom Field
Physicists used a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate of potassium-39 to directly image vacuum fluctuations, amplifying pre-existing quantum jitter to distinguish it from thermal noise. The resulting measurements align with vacuum-origin fluctuations and can emulate relativistic sine-Gordon fields, offering a controllable laboratory platform for probing quantum-field phenomena and potential processes like particle production and false-vacuum decay.