Hawking Radiation on an Ion Ring in the Quantum Regime

TL;DR

This paper explores simulating acoustic black holes using ions on a rotating ring, demonstrating Hawking radiation emission and entanglement, with potential detection schemes in a quantum ion system.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ion ring setup for simulating acoustic black holes with nonlinear dispersion and analyzes Hawking radiation detection methods.

Findings

Hawking radiation can be generated in the ion ring system

Entanglement between inside and outside regions is achievable

Detection schemes for Hawking effect are proposed

Abstract

This paper discusses a recent proposal for the simulation of acoustic black holes with ions. The ions are rotating on a ring with an inhomogeneous, but stationary velocity profile. Phonons cannot leave a region, in which the ion velocity exceeds the group velocity of the phonons, as light cannot escape from a black hole. The system is described by a discrete field theory with a nonlinear dispersion relation. Hawking radiation is emitted by this acoustic black hole, generating entanglement between the inside and the outside of the black hole. We study schemes to detect the Hawking effect in this setup.