We present a method for exploring analogue Hawking radiation using a laser pulse propagating through an underdense plasma. The propagating fields in the Hawking effect are local perturbations of the plasma density and laser amplitude. We derive the dependence of the resulting Hawking temperature on the dimensionless amplitude of the laser and the behaviour of the spot area of the laser at the analogue event horizon. We demonstrate one possible way of obtaining the analogue Hawking temperature in terms of the plasma wavelength, and our analysis shows that for a high intensity near-IR laser the analogue Hawking temperature is less than approximately 25K for a reasonable choice of parameters.
We measure the correlation spectrum of the Hawking radiation emitted by an analogue black hole and find it to be thermal at the Hawking temperature implied by the analogue surface gravity. The Hawking radiation is in the regime of linear dispersion, in analogy with a real black hole. Furthermore, the radiation inside of the black hole is seen to be composed of negative-energy partners only. This work confirms the prediction of Hawking's theory regarding the value of the Hawking temperature, as well as the thermality of the spectrum. The thermality of Hawking radiation is the root of the inform…
We observe spontaneous Hawking radiation, stimulated by quantum vacuum fluctuations, emanating from an analogue black hole in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. Correlations are observed between the Hawking particles outside the black hole and the partner particles inside. These correlations indicate an approximately thermal distribution of Hawking radiation. We find that the high energy pairs are entangled, while the low energy pairs are not, within the reasonable assumption that excitations with different frequencies are not correlated. The entanglement verifies the quantum nature of the Ha…
Stimulated emission by black holes is discussed in light of the analogue gravity program. We first consider initial quantum states containing a definite number of particles, and then we take into account the case where the initial state is a coherent state. The latter case is particularly significant in the case where Hawking radiation is studied in dielectric black holes, and the emission is stimulated by a laser probe. We are particularly interested in the case of the electromagnetic field, for which stimulated radiation is calculated too.
In this paper we consider possible analogue Hawking radiation from a normal dielectric and metamaterial composite, having an analogue horizon where the dielectric parameters vanish and change sign upon crossing this transition zone. We follow a complex path analysis to show the presence of an analogue Hawking temperature at the horizon and subsequent photon production from the ambient electromagnetic field. Possibility of experimental observation is also commented upon.
We analytically study the low-frequency properties of the analogue Hawking effect in Bose-Einstein condensates. We show that in one-dimensional flows displaying an analogue horizon, the Hawking effect is dominant in the low-frequency regime. This happens despite non vanishing greybody factors, that is, the coupling of the Hawking mode and its partner to the mode propagating with the flow. To show this, we obtained analytical expressions for the scattering coefficients, in general flows and taking into account the full Bogoliubov dispersion relation. We discuss the obtained expressions for the …
The observation of quantum Hawking radiation and its entanglement in an analogue black hole was recently reported. A subsequent note (arXiv:1609.03803) criticized the study. Version 2 of the note was recently presented. The note suffers from technical difficulties which invalidate its main claims. We answer all of the comments in the note and show that the criticisms are not valid. We also answer a comment made by the author of the note in a different forum.
The sonic analogue of Hawking radiation can now be experimentally recreated in Bose-Einstein Condensates that contain an acoustic black hole. In these experiments the signal strength and analogue Hawking temperature increase for denser condensates, which however also suffer increased atom losses from inelastic collisions. To determine how these affect analogue Hawking radiation, we numerically simulate creation of the latter in a Bose-Einstein Condensate in the presence of atomic losses. In particular we explore modifications of density-density correlations through which the radiation has been…
We consider further on the problem of the analogue Hawking radiation. We propose a fourth order ordinary differential equation, which allows to discuss the problem of Hawking radiation in analogue gravity in a unified way, encompassing fluids and dielectric media. In a suitable approximation, involving weak dispersive effects, WKB solutions are obtained far from the horizon (turning point), and furthermore an equation governing the behaviour near the horizon is derived, and a complete set of analytical solutions is obtained also near the horizon. The subluminal case of the original fluid model…
We study the quantum fluctuations in a one dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate realizing an analogous acoustic black hole. The taking into account of evanescent channels and of zero modes makes it possible to accurately reproduce recent experimental measurements of the density correlation function. We discuss the determination of Hawking temperature and show that in our model the analogous radiation presents some significant departure from thermality.
We obtain the analytic solutions of the radial part of the massless Klein-Gordon equation in the spacetime of both three dimensional rotating and four dimensional canonical acoustic black holes, which are given in terms of the confluent Heun functions. From these solutions, we obtain the scalar waves near the acoustic horizon. We discuss the analogue Hawking radiation of massless scalar particles and the features of the spectrum associated with the radiation emitted by these acoustic black holes.
Propagation of coherent light in a Kerr nonlinear medium can be mapped onto a flow of an equivalent fluid. Here we use this mapping to model the conditions in the vicinity of a rotating black hole as a Laguerre-Gauss vortex beam. We describe weak fluctuations of the phase and amplitude of the electric field by wave equations in curved space, with a metric that is similar to the Kerr metric. We find the positions of event horizons and ergoregion boundaries, and the conditions for the onset of superradiance, which are simultaneously the conditions for a resonance in the analogue Hawking radiatio…
Our knowledge of dynamical black holes suffers from a lack of observational insight. In an analogue model of gravity, we can design a longitudinally symmetric dynamical acoustic black hole with a moving horizon. In this symmetric spacetime, the marginally outer trapped surface and the so called evolving horizon are degenerate. Interestingly, there are many ways of assigning a surface gravity to the horizon in the absence of time translation invariance. Here, we present two of them that are distinguished by whether they are defined only locally or take into account the global properties of spac…
We derive analytic expressions for the low-frequency properties of the analogue Hawking radiation in a general weak-dispersive medium. A thermal low-frequency part of the spectrum is expected even when dispersive effects become significant. We consider the two most common class of weak-dispersive media and investigate all possible anomalous scattering processes due inhomogeneous background flows. We first argue that under minimal assumptions, the scattering processes in near-critical flows are well described by a linearized Korteweg-de Vries equation. Within our theoretical model greybody fact…
Hawking radiation, the spontaneous emission of thermal photons from an event horizon, is one of the most intriguing and elusive predictions of field theory in curved spacetimes. A formally analogue phenomenon occurs at the supersonic transition of a fluid: in this respect, ultracold gases stand out among the most promising systems but the theoretical modelling of this effect has always been carried out in semiclassical approximation, borrowing part of the analysis from the gravitational analogy. Here we discuss the exact solution of a one-dimensional Bose gas flowing against an obstacle, showi…
Hawking radiation was originally proposed in astrophysics, but it has been generalized and extended to other physical systems receiving the name of analogue Hawking radiation. In the last two decades, several attempts have been made to measure it in a laboratory, one of the most successful systems is in optics. Light interacting in a dielectric material causes an analogue Hawking effect, in fact, its stimulated version has already been detected and the search for the spontaneous signal is currently ongoing. We briefly review the general derivation of Hawking radiation, then we focus on the opt…
In 1981 Unruh proposed that fluid mechanical experiments could be used to probe key aspects of the quantum phenomenology of black holes. In particular, he claimed that an analogue to Hawking radiation could be created within a fluid mechanical `dumb hole', with the event horizon replaced by a sonic horizon. Since then an entire sub-field of `analogue gravity' has been created. In 2016 Steinhauer reported the experimental observation of quantum Hawking radiation and its entanglement in a Bose-Einstein condensate analogue black hole. What can we learn from such analogue experiments? In particula…
Inspired by a recent experiment by Steinhauer and co-workers, we present a simple model which describes the formation of an acoustic black hole in a Bose-Einstein condensate, allowing an analytical computation of the evolution in time of the corresponding density-density correlator. We show the emergence of analog Hawking radiation out of a "quantum atmosphere" region significantly displaced from the horizon. This is quantitatively studied both at $T=0$ and even in the presence of an initial temperature T, as is always the case experimentally.
Arising out of a Non-local non-relativistic BEC, we present an Analogue gravity model upto $\mathcal{O}(ξ^{2})$ accuracy in the presence of the quantum potential term for a canonical acoustic BH in $(3+1)$-d spacetime where the series solution of the free minimally coupled KG equation for the large length scale massive scalar modes is derived. We systematically address the issues of the presence of the quantum potential term being the root cause of a UV-IR coupling between short wavelength `primary' modes which are supposedly Hawking radiated through the sonic horizon and the large wavelength …
We propose the use of a waveguide-like transmission line based on direct-current superconducting quantum interference devices (dc-SQUID) and study the sine-Gordon (SG) equation which characterises the dynamical behavior of the superconducting phase in this transmission line. Guided by the duality between black holes in Jackiw-Teitelboim (JT) dilaton gravity and solitons in sine-Gordon field theory, we show how to, in our setup, realize 1 + 1 dimensional black holes as solitons of the sine-Gordon equation. We also study the analogue Hawking radiation in terms of the quantum soliton evaporation,…
We take into account two further physical models which play an utmost importance in the framework of Analogue Gravity. We first consider Bose--Einstein condensates (BEC) and then surface gravity waves in water. Our approach is based on the use of the master equation we introduced in a previous work. A more complete analysis of the singular perturbation problem involved, with particular reference to the behavior in the neighbourhood of the (real) turning point and its connection with the WKB approximation, allows us to verify the thermal character of the particle production process. Furthermore…
We study in detail the scattering of light on a soliton propagating in a waveguide which has been proposed as an experimental system in which one could observe the analogue Hawking effect. When not applying the rotating wave approximation, we show that the linearized wave equation governing perturbations has the same structure as that governing phonon propagation in an atomic Bose condensate. By taking into account the full dispersion relation, we then show that the scattering coefficients encoding the production of photon pairs are amplified by a resonance effect related to the modulation ins…
This note analyses on the long wavelength dynamics of a two horizon analogue black hole system in one spatial dimension. By introducing an effective scalar-dilaton model we show that closed form expressions can be obtained for the time-dependent Hawking flux and the energy density of the Hawking radiation. We show that, in the absence superluminal modes, there is a vacuum instability. This instability is recognisable to relativists as the analogue to the destabilisation of the Cauchy horizon of a black hole due to vacuum polarization.
Quantum effects of fields on curved spacetimes may be studied in the laboratory thanks to quantum fluids. Here we use a polariton fluid to study the Hawking effect, the correlated emission from the quantum vacuum at the acoustic horizon. We show how out-of-equilibrium physics affects the dispersion relation, and hence the emission and propagation of correlated waves: the fluid properties on either side of the horizon are critical to observing the Hawking effect. We find that emission may be optimised by supporting the phase and density of the fluid upstream of the horizon in a regime of optica…
The question of whether Hawking evaporation violates unitarity, and therefore results in the loss of information, remains unresolved since Hawking's seminal discovery. So far the investigations remain mostly theoretical since it is almost impossible to settle this paradox through direct astrophysical black hole observations. Here we point out that relativistic plasma mirrors can be accelerated drastically and stopped abruptly by impinging ultra intense x-ray pulses on solid plasma targets with a density gradient. This is analogous to the late time evolution of black hole Hawking evaporation. A…
A general bound on the Lyapunov exponent of a quantum system is given by $λ_L\leq2π\,T/\hbar$, where $T$ is the system temperature, as established by Maldacena, Shenker, and Stanford (MSS). This upper bound is saturated when the system under consideration is the exact holographic dual of a black hole. It has also been shown that an inverted harmonic oscillator (IHO) may exhibit the behavior of thermal energy emission, in close analogy to the Hawking radiation emitted by black holes. We demonstrate that the Lyapunov exponent of the IHO indeed saturates the MSS bound, with an effective temperatu…
