Superfluid Picture for Rotating Space-Times

TL;DR

This paper proposes a superfluid condensate model for space-time, showing that rotating gravitational fields like cosmic strings can be described as vortices in a superfluid, leading to G"odel-like metrics and insights into general relativity's limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel superfluid-based framework for stationary gravitational fields, connecting cosmic string metrics to superfluid vortices and exploring multi-vortex configurations.

Findings

Cosmic string metrics correspond to superfluid vortices outside the core.

Multiple vortices can produce G"odel-like space-time metrics.

Breakdown of superfluid rigidity explains closed time-like curves.

Abstract

A new prescription, in the framework of condensate models for space-times, for physical stationary gravitational fields is presented. We show that the spinning cosmic string metric describes the gravitational field associated with the single vortex in a superfluid condensate model for space-time outside the vortex core. This metric differs significantly from the usual acoustic metric for the Onsager-Feynman vortex. We also consider the question of what happens when many vortices are present, and show that on large scales a G\"odel-like metric emerges. In both the single and multiple vortex cases the failure of general relativity exemplified by the presence of closed time-like curves is attributed to the breakdown of superfluid rigidity.