A sonic black hole, sometimes called a dumb hole or acoustic black hole, is a phenomenon in which phonons (sound perturbations) are unable to escape from a region of a fluid that is flowing more quickly than the local speed of sound. They are called sonic, or acoustic, black holes because these trapped phonons are analogous to light in astrophysical (gravitational) black holes. Physicists are interested in them because they have many properties similar to astrophysical black holes and, in particular, emit a phononic version of Hawking radiation. [1] [2] This Hawking radiation can be spontaneously created by quantum vacuum fluctuations, in close analogy with Hawking radiation from a real black hole. On the other hand, the Hawking radiation can be stimulated in a classical process. The boundary of a sonic black hole, at which the flow speed changes from being greater than the speed of sound to less than the speed of sound, is called the event horizon.
Acoustic black holes were first theorized to be useful by W. G. Unruh in 1981. [3] However, the first black hole analogue was not created in a laboratory until 2009. It was created in a rubidium Bose–Einstein condensate using a technique called density inversion. This technique creates a flow by repelling the condensate with a potential minimum. The surface gravity and temperature of the sonic black hole were measured, but no attempt was made to detect Hawking radiation. However, the scientists who created it predicted that the experiment was suitable for detection and suggested a method by which it might be done by lasing the phonons. [4] In 2014, stimulated Hawking radiation was reported in an analogue black-hole laser by the same researchers. [2] Quantum, spontaneous Hawking radiation was observed later. [5] [6] [7]
A rotating sonic black hole was used in 2010 to give the first laboratory testing of superradiance, a process whereby energy is extracted from a black hole. [8]
Sonic black holes are possible because phonons in perfect fluids exhibit the same properties of motion as fields, such as gravity, in space and time. [1] For this reason, a system in which a sonic black hole can be created is called a gravity analogue. Nearly any fluid can be used to create an acoustic event horizon, but the viscosity of most fluids creates random motion[ citation needed ] that makes features like Hawking radiation nearly impossible to detect. The complexity of such a system would make it very difficult to gain any knowledge about such features even if they could be detected. [9] Many nearly perfect fluids have been suggested for use in creating sonic black holes, such as superfluid helium, one–dimensional degenerate Fermi gases, and Bose–Einstein condensate. Gravity analogues other than phonons in a fluid, such as slow light and a system of ions, have also been proposed for studying black hole analogues. [10] The fact that so many systems mimic gravity is sometimes used as evidence for the theory of emergent gravity, which could help reconcile relativity, and quantum mechanics. [11]
In addition to the above-mentioned sonic or acoustic black holes that can be viewed as analogues of astrophysical black holes, physical objects bearing the same names also exist in Acoustic and Vibration Engineering, where they are used for sound absorption and for damping structural vibrations. [12] The Acoustic Black Hole effect in such objects can be achieved by creating a gradual reduction of sound velocity in a waveguide or elastic wave velocity in a solid structure (e.g. flexural wave velocity in thin plates) with propagation distance. The required velocity reduction should follow a power-law function of the propagation distance, and the velocity at the end of the wave propagation path should be reduced to almost zero. Also, measures should be taken to insert a small amount of traditional sound or vibration absorbing materials in the area of very low propagation velocity. Under these conditions, the described sonic or acoustic black holes provide almost 100% absorption of the incident air-borne or structure-borne acoustic waves.
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A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light and other electromagnetic waves, is capable of possessing enough energy to escape it. Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. A black hole has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, but it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly.
Hawking radiation is the theoretical thermal black-body radiation released outside a black hole's event horizon. This is counterintuitive because once ordinary electromagnetic radiation is inside the event horizon, it cannot escape. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking, who developed a theoretical argument for its existence in 1974. Hawking radiation is predicted to be extremely faint and is many orders of magnitude below the current best telescopes' detecting ability.
In physics, black hole thermodynamics is the area of study that seeks to reconcile the laws of thermodynamics with the existence of black hole event horizons. As the study of the statistical mechanics of black-body radiation led to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics, the effort to understand the statistical mechanics of black holes has had a deep impact upon the understanding of quantum gravity, leading to the formulation of the holographic principle.
A gravastar is an object hypothesized in astrophysics by Pawel O. Mazur and Emil Mottola as an alternative to the black hole theory. It has usual black hole metric outside of the horizon, but de Sitter metric inside. On the horizon there is a thin shell of matter. The term "gravastar" is a portmanteau of the words "gravitational vacuum star". Further theoretical considerations of gravastars include the notion of a nestar.
In condensed matter physics, a supersolid is a spatially ordered material with superfluid properties. In the case of helium-4, it has been conjectured since the 1960s that it might be possible to create a supersolid. Starting from 2017, a definitive proof for the existence of this state was provided by several experiments using atomic Bose–Einstein condensates. The general conditions required for supersolidity to emerge in a certain substance are a topic of ongoing research.
The Immirzi parameter is a numerical coefficient appearing in loop quantum gravity (LQG), a nonperturbative theory of quantum gravity. The Immirzi parameter measures the size of the quantum of area in Planck units. As a result, its value is currently fixed by matching the semiclassical black hole entropy, as calculated by Stephen Hawking, and the counting of microstates in loop quantum gravity.
Micro black holes, also called mini black holes or quantum mechanical black holes, are hypothetical tiny black holes, for which quantum mechanical effects play an important role. The concept that black holes may exist that are smaller than stellar mass was introduced in 1971 by Stephen Hawking.
The black hole information paradox is a paradox that appears when the predictions of quantum mechanics and general relativity are combined. The theory of general relativity predicts the existence of black holes that are regions of spacetime from which nothing—not even light—can escape. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking applied the semiclassical approach of quantum field theory in curved spacetime to such systems and found that an isolated black hole would emit a form of radiation. He also argued that the detailed form of the radiation would be independent of the initial state of the black hole, and depend only on its mass, electric charge and angular momentum.
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory in curved spacetime (QFTCS) is an extension of quantum field theory from Minkowski spacetime to a general curved spacetime. This theory uses a semi-classical approach; it treats spacetime as a fixed, classical background, while giving a quantum-mechanical description of the matter and energy propagating through that spacetime. A general prediction of this theory is that particles can be created by time-dependent gravitational fields (multigraviton pair production), or by time-independent gravitational fields that contain horizons. The most famous example of the latter is the phenomenon of Hawking radiation emitted by black holes.
In black hole physics and inflationary cosmology, the trans-Planckian problem is the problem of the appearance of quantities beyond the Planck scale, which raise doubts on the physical validity of some results in these two areas, since one expects the physical laws to suffer radical modifications beyond the Planck scale.
In acoustics and fluid dynamics, an acoustic metric is a metric that describes the signal-carrying properties of a given particulate medium.
In physics, quantum acoustics is the study of sound under conditions such that quantum mechanical effects are relevant. For most applications, classical mechanics are sufficient to accurately describe the physics of sound. However very high frequency sounds, or sounds made at very low temperatures may be subject to quantum effects.
Sound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (SASER) refers to a device that emits acoustic radiation. It focuses sound waves in a way that they can serve as accurate and high-speed carriers of information in many kinds of applications—similar to uses of laser light.
An optical black hole is a phenomenon in which slow light is passed through a Bose–Einstein condensate that is itself spinning faster than the local speed of light within to create a vortex capable of trapping the light behind an event horizon just as a gravitational black hole would.
Analog models of gravity are attempts to model various phenomena of general relativity using other physical systems such as acoustics in a moving fluid, superfluid helium, or Bose–Einstein condensate; gravity waves in water; and propagation of electromagnetic waves in a dielectric medium. These analogs serve to provide new ways of looking at problems, permit ideas from other realms of science to be applied, and may create opportunities for practical experiments within the analog that can be applied back to the source phenomena.
A black star is a gravitational object composed of matter. It is a theoretical alternative to the black hole concept from general relativity. The theoretical construct was created through the use of semiclassical gravity theory. A similar structure should also exist for the Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations system, which is the (super) classical limit of quantum electrodynamics, and for the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Dirac system, which is the (super) classical limit of the standard model.
An acoustic metamaterial, sonic crystal, or phononic crystal is a material designed to control, direct, and manipulate sound waves or phonons in gases, liquids, and solids. Sound wave control is accomplished through manipulating parameters such as the bulk modulus β, density ρ, and chirality. They can be engineered to either transmit, or trap and amplify sound waves at certain frequencies. In the latter case, the material is an acoustic resonator.
In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer. Wolfgang Rindler coined the term in the 1950s.
Superfluid vacuum theory (SVT), sometimes known as the BEC vacuum theory, is an approach in theoretical physics and quantum mechanics where the fundamental physical vacuum is considered as a superfluid or as a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC).
A black hole firewall is a hypothetical phenomenon where an observer falling into a black hole encounters high-energy quanta at the event horizon. The "firewall" phenomenon was proposed in 2012 by physicists Ahmed Almheiri, Donald Marolf, Joseph Polchinski, and James Sully as a possible solution to an apparent inconsistency in black hole complementarity. The proposal is sometimes referred to as the AMPS firewall, an acronym for the names of the authors of the 2012 paper. The potential inconsistency pointed out by AMPS had been pointed out earlier by Samir Mathur who used the argument in favour of the fuzzball proposal. The use of a firewall to resolve this inconsistency remains controversial, with physicists divided as to the solution to the paradox.
