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Long time universality of black-hole lasers

Juan Ramón Muñoz de Nova, Patricia Palacios, Iacopo Carusotto, Fernando Sols

Published Feb 1, 2021• 8 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

For flowing quantum gases, it has been found that at long times an initial black-hole laser (BHL) configuration exhibits only two possible states: the ground state or a periodic self-oscillating state of continuous emission of solitons. So far, all the works on this subject are based on a highly idealized model, quite difficult to implement experimentally. Here we study the instability spectrum and the time evolution of a recently proposed realistic model of a BHL, thus providing a useful theoretical tool for the clear identification of black-hole lasing in future experiments. We further confirm the existence of a well-defined phase diagram at long times, which bespeaks universality in the long-time behavior of a BHL. Additionally, we develop a complementary model in which the same potential profile is applied to a subsonic homogeneous flowing condensate that, despite not forming a BHL, evolves toward the same phase diagram as the associated BHL model. This result reveals an even stronger form of robustness in the long-time behavior with respect to the transient, which goes beyond what has been described in the previous literature.

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For flowing quantum gases, it has been found that at long times an initial black-hole laser (BHL) configuration exhibits only two possible states: the ground state or a periodic self-oscillating state of continuous emission of solitons. So far, all the works on this subject are based on a highly idealized model, quite difficult to implement experimentally. Here we study the instability spectrum and the time evolution of a recently proposed realistic model of a BHL, thus providing a useful theoretical tool for the clear identification of black-hole lasing in future experiments. We further confirm the existence of a well-defined phase diagram at long times, which bespeaks universality in the long-time behavior of a BHL. Additionally, we develop a complementary model in which the same potential profile is applied to a subsonic homogeneous flowing condensate that, despite not forming a BHL, evolves toward the same phase diagram as the associated BHL model. This result reveals an even stronger form of robustness in the long-time behavior with respect to the transient, which goes beyond what has been described in the previous literature.
Abstract For flowing quantum gases, it has been found that at long times an initial black-hole laser (BHL) configuration exhibits only two possible states: the ground state or a periodic self-oscillating state of continuous emission of solitons. So far, all the works on this subject are based on a highly idealized model, quite difficult to implement experimentally. Here we study the instability spectrum and the time evolution of a recently proposed realistic model of a BHL, thus providing a useful theoretical tool for the clear identification of black-hole lasing in future experiments. We further confirm the existence of a well-defined phase diagram at long times, which bespeaks universality in the long-time behavior of a BHL. Additionally, we develop a complementary model in which the same potential profile is applied to a subsonic homogeneous flowing condensate that, despite not forming a BHL, evolves toward the same phase diagram as the associated BHL model. This result reveals an even stronger form of robustness in the long-time behavior with respect to the transient, which goes beyond what has been described in the previous literature.
We numerically study the temporal evolution of a black-hole laser configuration displaying a pair of black- and white-hole horizons in a flowing atomic condensate. This configuration is initially prepared starting from a homogeneous flow via a suitable space-dependent change of the interaction constant and the evolution is then followed up to long times. Depending on the values of the system parameters, the system typically either converges to the lowest-energy solution by evaporating away the horizons or displays a continuous and periodic coherent emission of solitons. By making a physical comparison with optical laser devices, we identify the latter regime of continuous emission of solitons as the proper black-hole laser effect.
From both a theoretical and an experimental point of view, Bose–Einstein condensates are good candidates for studying gravitational analogues of black holes and black-hole lasers. In particular, a recent experiment has shown that a black-hole laser configuration can be created in the laboratory. However, the most considered theoretical models for analog black-hole lasers are quite difficult to implement experimentally. In order to fill this gap, we devote this work to present more realistic models for black-hole lasers. For that purpose, we first prove that, by symmetrically extending every black-hole configuration, one can obtain a black-hole laser configuration with an arbitrarily large supersonic region. Based on this result, we propose the use of an attractive square well and a double delta-barrier, which can be implemented using standard experimental tools, for studying black-hole lasers. We also compute the different stationary states of these setups, identifying the true ground state of the system and discussing the relation between the obtained solutions and the appearance of dynamical instabilities.
The black-hole laser (BHL) effect is the self-amplification of Hawking radiation in the presence of a pair of horizons which act as a resonant cavity. In a flowing atomic condensate, the BHL effect arises in a finite supersonic region, where Bogoliubov-Cherenkov-Landau (BCL) radiation is coherently excited by any static perturbation. Thus, experimental attempts to produce a black-hole laser unavoidably deal with the presence of a strong BCL background, making the observation of the BHL effect still a major challenge in the analog gravity field. Here, we perform a theoretical study of the BHL-BCL crossover using an idealized model where both phenomena can be unambiguously isolated. By drawing an analogy with an unstable pendulum, we distinguish three main regimes according to the interplay between quantum fluctuations and classical stimulation: quantum BHL, classical BHL, and BCL. Based on quite general scaling arguments, the nonlinear amplification of the initial amplitude of the quantum fluctuations up to saturation is identified as the most robust trait of a quantum BHL. A classical BHL behaves instead as a linear quantum amplifier, where the output is proportional to the input. The BCL regime also acts as a linear quantum amplifier, but its gain is exponentially smaller as compared to a classical BHL. In addition, we find that the decrease in the amplification for increasing BCL amplitude or the nonmonotonic dependence of the growth rate with respect to the background parameters are complementary signatures of black-hole lasing. We also identify interesting analog phenomena such as Hawking-stimulated white-hole radiation or quantum BCL-stimulated Hawking radiation. The results of this work not only are of interest for analog gravity, where they help to distinguish each phenomenon and to design experimental setups leading to a clear observation of the BHL effect, but they also open the prospect of finding applications of analog concepts in quantum technologies.
We theoretically analyse a recent experiment reporting the observation of a self-amplifying Hawking radiation in a flowing atomic condensate (S teinhauer J., Nat. Phys. , 10 (2014) 864). 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.
Abstract We present a theoretical study on the origin of some findings of recent experiments on sonic analogs of gravitational black holes (BHs). We focus on the realization of a BH lasing configuration, where the conclusive identification of stimulated Hawking radiation (HR) requires dealing with the implications of the nonstationary character of the setup. To isolate the basic mechanisms responsible for the observed behavior, we use a toy model where nonstationarity can be described in terms of departures from adiabaticity. Our approach allows one to study which aspects of the characterization of BH lasing in static models are still present in a dynamical scenario. In particular, variations in the role of the dynamical instabilities can be traced. Arguments to conjecture the twofold origin of the detected amplification of sound are given: the differential effect of the instabilities on the mean field and on the quantum fluctuations gives some clues to separate a deterministic component from self-amplified HR. The role of classical noise, present in the experimental setup, is also tackled: we discuss the emergence of differences with the effect of quantum fluctuations when various unstable modes are relevant to the dynamics.