A. Motivation and Background
Nonlinear Excitations and Geometric Emergence in Condensed Matter
Over the past two decades, condensed matter physics has revealed a deep and often surprising capacity to emulate fundamental phenomena typically reserved for high-energy physics or cosmology. Among the most intriguing developments is the realization that nonlinear excitations in strongly correlated or topologically structured media can lead to emergent behaviors that are geometrically analogous to spacetime curvature, event horizons, or even expanding universe analogs.
Solitonic pulses, topological defects, and energy localization in nonlinear lattices or Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) are known to generate effective metrics that influence nearby excitations---drawing formal similarities with general relativistic phenomena. For instance, topological magnons, skyrmions, and quantum vortex lattices have been interpreted as low-dimensional analogs of gravitational or cosmological structures, with recent studies even proposing Hawking radiation analogs in BECs and photonic lattices.
This line of inquiry suggests that spatially structured nonlinearities, governed by dynamical field equations, can serve not only as analogs of gravitational interactions but also potentially simulate cosmogenesis---the birth and evolution of a universe---at a scale accessible within laboratories. The primary motivation of this work is to leverage this nonlinear capacity of condensed matter systems to construct and simulate a controlled cosmological excitation, dubbed the Blink Universe, that is not governed by a continuous inflation or bang, but by an abrupt, localized information-driven nonlinear burst.
Analog Cosmology as a Testbed for Early Universe Modeling
Analog gravity and analog cosmology offer powerful frameworks for studying inaccessible epochs of the early universe. The fundamental idea is to use lab-controllable media with mathematically analogous dynamics to explore the mechanisms that may have governed cosmological phase transitions, particle genesis, or vacuum energy fluctuations. In particular, acoustic black holes, emergent metrics in photonic crystals, and magneto-optical analogs of de Sitter space have demonstrated the plausibility of this interdisciplinary approach.
This emerging field is motivated by two constraints in traditional cosmology:
Empirical inaccessibility of the early universe, which limits testing of models like cosmic inflation, multiverse theory, or pre-inflation quantum geometry.
Quantum-gravity unification gap, which remains a theoretical frontier due to the lack of low-energy testbeds.
By constructing analog systems that mimic nonlinear, curved-space evolution from flat vacua, we hope to create a platform where the cosmological 'beginning' can be probed in controlled, measurable conditions. The Blink Universe model introduced in this work not only represents a departure from inflationary assumptions, but also introduces an experimentally accessible alternative in which geometric and informational structures emerge from driven excitations over vacuum-like or spin-lattice substrates.
The rest of the paper develops the theoretical formalism, numerical simulations, and experimental design needed to realize this proposal and connect nonlinear excitations in condensed matter systems to fundamental cosmological processes.
B. Casimir Effect and Quantum Vacuum as Drivers of Topology
