Acoustic black holes
Abstract
Acoustic propagation in a moving fluid provides a conceptually clean and powerful analogy for understanding black hole physics. As a teaching tool, the analogy is useful for introducing students to both General Relativity and fluid mechanics. As a research tool, the analogy helps clarify what aspects of the physics are kinematics and what aspects are dynamics. In particular, Hawking radiation is a purely kinematical effect, whereas black hole entropy is intrinsically dynamical. Finally, I discuss the fact that with present technology acoustic Hawking radiation is almost experimentally testable.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9901047,
title = {Acoustic black holes},
author = {Matt Visser},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9901047},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
10 pages, uses Springer-Verlag macro package. To appear in the Proceedings of the 1998 Peniscola Summer School on Particle Physics and Cosmology. (Springer-Verlag)