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arXiv:gr-qc/0002015 · Physical Review Letters

Sonic Analog of Gravitational Black Holes in Bose-Einstein Condensates

Luis J. Garay, J. R. Anglin, J. I. Cirac, P. Zoller

Published Nov 27, 2000• 677 citations
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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.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.85.4643

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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.
The sonic analog of a gravitational black hole in dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates is investigated. It is shown that there exist both dynamically stable and unstable configurations which, in the hydrodynamic limit, exhibit behaviors completely analogous to that of gravitational black holes. The dynamical instabilities involve the creation of quasiparticle pairs in positive and negative energy states. We illustrate these features in two qualitatively different one-dimensional models, namely, a long, thin condensate with an outcoupler laser beam providing an ``atom sink,'' and a tight ring-shaped condensate. We also simulate the creation of a stable sonic black hole by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation numerically for a condensate subject to a trapping potential which is adiabatically deformed. A sonic black hole could, in this way, be created experimentally with state-of-the-art or planned technology.
Simulation of a sonic black-hole/white-hole pair in a (2+1)-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate shows formation of superfluid vortices through dynamical instabilities seeded by initial quantum noise. The instabilities saturate in a quasi-steady state of superfluid turbulence within the supersonic region, from which sound waves are emitted in qualitative resemblance to Hawking radiance. The power spectrum of the radiation from the slowly decaying two-dimensional sonic black hole is strongly non-thermal, however.
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.
We have created an analog of a black hole in a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this sonic black hole, sound waves, rather than light waves, cannot escape the event horizon. A steplike potential accelerates the flow of the condensate to velocities which cross and exceed the speed of sound by an order of magnitude. The Landau critical velocity is therefore surpassed. The point where the flow velocity equals the speed of sound is the sonic event horizon. The effective gravity is determined from the profiles of the velocity and speed of sound. A simulation finds negative energy excitations, by means of Bragg spectroscopy.
We theoretically propose a finite-size quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate with coherent source and drain placed at its two ends, which can in principle sustain a stationary sonic black hole with a single event horizon. Our analysis is focused on the condensate persistence against quantum fluctuations. We show that similar to black hole-white hole pairs, dynamical instabilities occur. Investigating in detail the instabilities' dependence on the system parameters, we also identify windows of formally infinite black hole lifetimes. By using quantum depletion of the condensate as a diagnostic tool, we validate the usage of Bogoliubov theory to describe the analog Hawking process, and establish novel signatures of Hawking radiation in the depleted cloud, both inside and outside the event horizon.
In a previous article, we studied stationary solutions to the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate corresponding to acoustic (or Unruh) black or white holes, namely, configurations where the flow becomes supersonic, creating a horizon for phonons. In this paper, we consider again the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, but looking for stationary numerical solutions in the case where the couplings are position dependent in a prescribed manner. Initially, we consider a two-dimensional quantum gas in a funnel-like spatial metric. We then reinterpret this solution as a solution in a flat metric but with spatially dependent coupling and external potential. In these solutions, the local speed of sound and the magnitude of flow velocity cross, indicating the existence of a supersonic region and therefore of sonic analogs of black and white holes and wormholes. We discuss the numerical techniques used. We also study phase (and density) fluctuations in these solutions and derive approximate acoustic metric tensors. For certain external potentials, we find uniform-density acoustic-black-hole configurations and obtain their Hawking temperature.