Gravitational Waves and Black Hole perturbations in Acoustic Analogues

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational wave-like perturbations can be simulated in acoustic black holes created in Bose-Einstein condensates, enabling the study of black hole dynamics through phonon emissions.

Contribution

It demonstrates that external potentials can induce gravitational wave analogues in acoustic black holes, advancing the simulation of gravitational phenomena in laboratory settings.

Findings

External potentials can generate gravitational wave-like perturbations.

Acoustic black holes can be excited and studied through these perturbations.

Phonon emission can be used to analyze black hole relaxation processes.

Abstract

Phonons in Bose-Einstein condensates propagate as massless scalar particles on top of an emergent acoustic metric. This hydrodynamics/gravity analogy can be exploited to realize acoustic black holes, featuring an event horizon that traps phonons. We show that by an appropriate external potential, gravitational wave-like perturbations of the acoustic metric can be produced. Such perturbations can be used to excite an acoustic black hole, which should then relax by phonon emission.