Sonic analog of gravitational black holes in Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that Bose-Einstein condensates can mimic black hole physics, including stable and unstable configurations, quasiparticle pair creation, and proposes a scheme to generate a stable sonic black hole in a ring trap.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of sonic black holes in Bose-Einstein condensates and proposes a practical scheme to create stable configurations.

Findings

Existence of stable and unstable sonic black hole configurations

Dynamical instabilities involve quasiparticle pair creation

Proposal for generating a stable sonic black hole in a ring trap

Abstract

It is shown that, in dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates, there exist both dynamically stable and unstable configurations which, in the hydrodynamic limit, exhibit a behavior resembling that of gravitational black holes. The dynamical instabilities involve creation of quasiparticle pairs in positive and negative energy states, as in the well-known suggested mechanism for black hole evaporation. We propose a scheme to generate a stable sonic black hole in a ring trap.