{"id":214870,"date":"2025-09-10T06:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T06:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214870\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T06:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T06:58:11","slug":"something-from-nothing-physicists-mimic-the-impossible-schwinger-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/214870\/","title":{"rendered":"Something From Nothing \u2013 Physicists Mimic the \u201cImpossible\u201d Schwinger Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"Quantum<\/a>Physicists have long wondered whether matter can spontaneously emerge from nothing, a process known as the Schwinger effect. Though the original idea required impossibly high electric fields, researchers at the University of British Columbia have now proposed a striking analog: using superfluid helium films to generate vortex pairs from a flowing \u201cfrictionless vacuum.\u201d Credit: SciTechDaily.com<\/p>\n

Superfluid helium reveals a manageable analog to the Schwinger effect. It deepens understanding of vortices and quantum tunneling.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1951, physicist Julian Schwinger proposed that applying a constant electric field to a vacuum could cause electron-positron pairs to emerge spontaneously, a process known as quantum tunneling.<\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t this matter from nothing idea power Star Trek replicators or transporters? The electric fields required would be extraordinarily large, well beyond the reach of any direct laboratory experiment.<\/p>\n

Because of this limitation, the phenomenon, known as the Schwinger effect, has never been directly observed.<\/p>\n

Superfluid helium as an experimental analog<\/p>\n

Physicists at the University of British Columbia (UBC)<\/a> have now outlined a related effect in a system that is easier to study. In their approach, a thin layer of superfluid helium replaces the vacuum, while the flowing motion of the superfluid takes the role of the immense electric field.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuperfluid Helium-4 is a wonder. At a few atomic layers thick, it can be cooled very easily to a temperature where it\u2019s basically in a frictionless vacuum state,\u201d explains Dr. Philip Stamp, a theorist at UBC working on condensed matter and quantum gravity, whose new findings appeared in PNAS on 1 September 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we make that frictionless vacuum flow, instead of electron-positron pairs appearing, vortex\/anti-vortex pairs will appear spontaneously, spinning in opposite directions to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mapping out the theory and experiments<\/p>\n

In the paper, Dr. Stamp and UBC colleague Michael Desrochers outline the theory and the mathematics behind it\u2014mapping out a detailed approach to conducting a direct experiment.<\/p>\n

Vacuum tunneling is a process of keen interest in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. In quantum theory, vacuums aren\u2019t empty, they\u2019re filled with fluctuating fields that can lead to the temporary appearance and disappearance of virtual particles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe the Helium-4 film provides a nice analog to several cosmic phenomena,\u201d adds Dr. Stamp. \u201cThe vacuum in deep space, quantum black holes, even the very beginning of the Universe itself. And these are phenomena we can\u2019t ever approach in any direct experimental way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond analogs and into superfluid physics<\/p>\n

However, Dr. Stamp emphasizes that the real interest of the work may lie less in an analogs \u2013 which always have limitations \u2013 and more in the way it alters our understanding of superfluids, and of phase transitions in two-dimensional systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are real physical systems in their own right, not analogs. And we can do experiments on these.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the mathematical level, the researchers needed several breakthroughs to make the theory work. For example, previous researchers looking at vortices in superfluids have treated the vortex mass as an unchanging constant. Dr. Stamp and Desrochers showed that this mass will vary dramatically as the vortices move, fundamentally changing our understanding of vortices in both fluids and the early universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to understand how and why the mass varies, and how this affects our understanding of quantum tunnelling processes, which are ubiquitous in physics, chemistry, and biology,\u201d says Desrochers.<\/p>\n

Stamp also argues that the same mass variability will occur with electron-positron pairs in the Schwinger effect, thereby modifying Schwinger\u2019s theory, in a kind of \u2018revenge of the analog\u2019.<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cVacuum tunneling of vortices in two-dimensional 4He superfluid films\u201d by M. J. Desrochers, D. J. J. Marchand and P. C. E. Stamp, 2 September 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073\/pnas.2421273122<\/a><\/p>\n

The work was supported by the National Science and Engineering Research Council.<\/p>\n

Never miss a breakthrough: Join the SciTechDaily newsletter.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Physicists have long wondered whether matter can spontaneously emerge from nothing, a process known as the Schwinger effect.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":214871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[492,8068,836,159,117430,67,132,117431,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-214870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-quantum-mechanics","10":"tag-quantum-physics","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-superfluid","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-university-of-british-columbia","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115178708021922898","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}