Observation of self-amplifying Hawking radiation in an analogue black-hole laser

Jeff Steinhauer

Victor I. Kolobov, Katrine Golubkov, Juan Ramón Muñoz de Nova +1 more

Iacopo Carusotto, Serena Fagnocchi, Alessio Recati +2 more

Haruna Katayama

A black hole laser in analogues of gravity amplifies Hawking radiation, which is unlikely to be measured in real black holes, and makes it observable. There have been proposals to realize such black hole lasers in various systems. However, no progress has been made in electric circuits for a long time, despite their many advantages such as high-precision electromagnetic wave detection. Here we propose a black hole laser in Josephson transmission lines incorporating metamaterial elements capable of producing Hawking-pair propagation modes and a Kerr nonlinearity due to the Josephson nonlinear inductance. A single dark soliton obeying the nonlinear Schrödinger equation produces a black hole-white hole horizon pair that acts as a laser cavity through a change in the refractive index due to the Kerr effect. We show that the resulting laser is a squeezed-state laser characterized by squeezing parameters. We also evaluate the degree of quantum correlation between Hawking and its partner radiations using entanglement entropy which does not require simultaneous measurements between them. As a result, the obtained entanglement entropy depending on the soliton velocity provides strong evidence that the resulting laser is derived from Hawking radiation with quantum correlation generated by pair production from the vacuum.

Jeff Steinhauer, Juan Ramón Muñoz de Nova

We numerically study an analog black hole with two horizons with parameters similar to a recent experiment. We find that the Hawking radiation exists on a background which contains a density oscillation, a zero-frequency ripple. The Hawking radiation evolves from spontaneous to self-amplifying, while the background ripple grows steadily with no qualitative change. It is seen that the self-amplifying Hawking radiation has a nonzero frequency. This frequency is independent of the reference frame since it is the magnitude of the wave which oscillates, as in a standing wave. The background ripple appears even before the inner horizon is created, in contrast to predictions. Furthermore, we find that technical noise and shot-to-shot variations in the number of atoms are not sufficient to cause the observed correlation function. This work is in agreement with the recent observation of self-amplifying Hawking radiation, and explains some of the features seen. In contrast to some recent works, our study differentiates between the Hawking radiation observed, and the evolution of the background.

Silke Weinfurtner