Numerical study of a recent black hole lasing experiment

TL;DR

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of a black hole lasing experiment in atomic condensates, confirming the mechanism and revealing its classical hydrodynamic origin rather than quantum fluctuations.

Contribution

It offers a mean-field model that reproduces experimental results and clarifies the classical nature of the dynamical instability involved.

Findings

Reproduces experimental observations with a mean-field model

Confirms black hole lasing mechanism in atomic condensates

Shows the instability is of classical hydrodynamic origin

Abstract

We theoretically analyse a recent experiment reporting the observation of a self-amplifying Hawking radiation in a flowing atomic condensate [J.Steinhauer, Nature Physics, vol.10, pp.864, Nov 2014]. We are able to accurately reproduce the experimental observations using a theoretical model based on the numerical solution of a mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation that does not include quantum fluctuations of the matter field. In addition to confirming the black hole lasing mechanism, our results show that the underlying dynamical instability has a classical hydrodynamic origin and is triggered by a seed of deterministic nature, linked to the non-stationary of the process, rather than by thermal or zero-point fluctuations.