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Acoustic Dumb Holes

Authors: V. Cardoso

Ref.: Invited Seminar at The University of Mississippi (2005)

Abstract: Gravitational black holes are far from common day experience in many ways. Even though there are strong arguments predicting black holes, their manipulation and study is done theoretically, and therefore any experimental data is most welcome. An important step to make black holes more accessible (from an experimental point of view) was given in 1981 by Unruh, who came up with the notion of acoustic black holes. These acoustic black holes share many of the features of ordinary, gravitational black holes and have a great advantage over them: in principle, we can build one in any laboratory (or even at home!). I will discuss some general aspects of acoustic black holes, starting by some very simple examples. I discuss what features of ordinary black holes can we simulate, including classical wave phenomena and Hawking radiation. I argue that even though the Hawking temperature of these black holes is too low to be detected, acoustic black holes have interesting classical properties, some of which are outlined here, that should be explored.