Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2409.15403

Gravitational Waves and Black Hole perturbations in Acoustic Analogues

Chiara Coviello
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

In the present Master's thesis, I describe the research I conducted during my Master's program on the topic of analogue gravity. This line of research was initiated by Bill Unruh, who established an analogy between hydrodynamic flow with a supersonic region and black holes. One possibility to exploit this hydrodynamics/gravity analogy is to create analogue black holes within Bose-Einstein condensates. At low temperatures, phonons-low energy excitations-behave like a massless scalar field in an emergent acoustic metric determined by the condensate. An acoustic black hole is created by transonic fluid, and quantum fluctuations at the acoustic horizon lead to thermal radiation of phonons, akin to Hawking radiation. This emission has been numerically simulated and experimentally verified in Bose-Einstein condensates. The goal of my Master's thesis is to design a system in which an acoustic horizon is excited by a gravitational wave-like perturbation. The thesis is divided into two main parts: the first reviews essential topics of general relativity, quantum field theory in curved spacetimes and analogue gravity; while the second presents my results. Firstly, I propose a method to reproduce a gravitational wave perturbation on a flat background acoustic metric emergent from a Bose-Einstein condensate. Secondly, I demonstrate how to implement an impinging gravitational wave-like perturbation at an acoustic horizon. I then analyze how the horizon responds to this analogue gravitational wave and discuss the implications of my work, including potential studies on shear viscosity and entropy density of the perturbed acoustic horizon. Notably, these interesting research directions could be explored in experiments conducted with ultra-cold quantum gas platforms.

Explore related subjects

gr-qc

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Chiara Coviello. 2024-09-23. Gravitational Waves and Black Hole perturbations in Acoustic Analogues. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15403

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Naturally Light Distortion

In the most general formulation of gravity, the metric and connection are independent degrees of freedom, and the connection may include torsion and non-metricity (or distortion, collectively) degrees of freedom, resulting in a huge number of possible dynamical fields. However, most fields are either non-dynamical or extremely heavy and the general relativity is recovered at low energy. We find a unique naturally light vector- or scalar-like distortion field, which can be dynamical and have phenomenological implications. In particular, a light scalar particle that mixes with the Higgs boson naturally appears.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Polarization-Dependent Photon Propagation, Quasinormal Modes, and Gravitational Lensing in Higher-Curvature Effective Theories

We investigate the impact of higher-curvature corrections on photon propagation within an effective field theory framework and their observational consequences in strong gravitational fields. We consider polarization-dependent modifications to photon trajectories in static and spherically symmetric spacetimes, focusing on Schwarzschild and Reissner--Nordström black hole backgrounds. Using the geometrical optics approximation, we derive the effective metrics governing photon propagation and study the resulting polarization-dependent shifts of the photon sphere. We compute the corresponding quasinormal modes in the eikonal limit and analyze their polarization dependence. We further investigate gravitational lensing, focusing on polarization-dependent corrections to the deflection angle in both weak- and strong-field regimes. In the strong-deflection regime, we find that even perturbatively small EFT corrections modify the coefficient of the logarithmically divergent part of the deflection angle, resulting in a potentially observable difference from the uncorrected case. This suggests that strong gravitational lensing may provide a sensitive probe of small higher-curvature corrections. While extracting EFT information directly from QNM frequencies is more subtle, QNMs may provide complementary information to gravitational lensing in future studies. Our results establish a framework for probing higher-curvature effects through polarization-dependent strong-field observables.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Dynamics for Spin-$1/2$ Particles in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet Gravity II: Non-Relativistic Case

In this work, I investigate the non-relativistic quantum dynamics of spin-1/2 particles in Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (EGB) gravity and establish a direct connection between higher-curvature corrections, fermionic dynamics, and the phenomenology of compact objects. Starting from the Dirac Hamiltonian in a static, spherically symmetric EGB spacetime, we perform a Fold-Wouthuysen transformation and derive the effective Hamiltonian, including relativistic kinetic, gravitational, spin-orbit, and higher-curvature contributions. Heisenberg equations are then used to obtain the dynamics of velocity, force, and spin, revealing explicit EGB corrections for both translational motion and spin transport. In particular, the spin-orbit sector induces a modified precession frequency whose fractional deviation from general relativity scales as $δ_Ω=-4(ξ/M^{2})(M/ρ)^{3}$, providing a clear dimensionless signature of the Gauss-Bonnet coupling. Through Ehrenfest's theorem, we also establish the correspondence between the dynamics of quantum operators and their semiclassical gravitational limit. As an astrophysical application, we consider the stellar-mass black hole A0620-00 and show that prospective relative sensitivities in spin precession on the order of $10^{-3}$ to $10^{-4}$ can probe Gauss-Bonnet couplings in the range of approximately $10^{6}$ to $10^{8}\,{\rm m}^{2}$, depending on the orbital radius. This result identifies fermionic spin precession as a complementary channel for testing gravity with higher-curvature corrections and provides a quantum-mechanical framework connecting modified gravitational dynamics to precision phenomenology in strong-gravity regimes.

gr-qc↗