Search

This chapter is an introduction to the Bogoliubov theory of dilute Bose condensates as applied to the study of the spontaneous emission of phonons in a stationary condensate flowing at supersonic speeds. This emission process is a condensed-matter analog of Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes but is derived here from a microscopic quantum theory of the condensate without any use of the analogy with gravitational systems. To facilitate physical understanding of the basic concepts, a simple one-dimensional geometry with a stepwise homogenous flow is considered which allows for a fully analytical treatment., Comment: 41 pages. to appear in the proceedings of the IX SIGRAV School on 'Analogue Gravity', Como (Italy), May 2011

Hawking's prediction of thermal radiation by black holes has been shown by Unruh to be expected also in condensed matter systems. We show here that in a black hole-like configuration realised in a BEC this particle creation does indeed take place and can be unambiguously identified via a characteristic pattern in the density-density correlations. This opens the concrete possibility of the experimental verification of this effect., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures. Honorable mention in the 2010 GRF Essay Competition

The relationship between Hawking radiation emitted by non extremal and extremal Reissner Nordstrom black holes is critically analyzed. A careful study of a series of regular collapsing geometries reveals that the stress energy tensor stays regular in the extremal limit and is smoothly connected to that of non extremal black holes. The unexpected feature is that the late time transients which played little role in the non extremal case are necessary to preserve the well defined character of the flux in the extremal case. The known singular behavior of the static energy density of extremal black holes is recovered from our series by neglecting these transients, when performing what turns out to be an illegitimate late time limit. Although our results are derived in two dimensional settings, we explain why they should also apply to higher dimensional black holes., Comment: 18 pages, latex

Using the action principle we first review how linear density perturbations (sound waves) in an Eulerian fluid obey a relativistic equation: the d'Alembert equation. This analogy between propagation of sound and that of a massless scalar field in a Lorentzian metric also applies to non-homogeneous flows. In these cases, sound waves effectively propagate in a curved four-dimensional ''acoustic'' metric whose properties are determined by the flow. Using this analogy, we consider regular flows which become supersonic, and show that the acoustic metric behaves like that of a black hole. The analogy is so good that, when considering quantum mechanics, acoustic black holes should produce a thermal flux of Hawking phonons. We then focus on two interesting questions related to Hawking radiation which are not fully understood in the context of gravitational black holes due to the lack of a theory of quantum gravity. The first concerns the calculation of the modifications of Hawking radiation which are induced by dispersive effects at short distances, i.e., approaching the atomic scale when considering sound. We generalize existing treatments and calculate the modifications caused by the propagation near the black hole horizon. The second question concerns backreaction effects. We return to the Eulerian action, compute second order effects, and show that the backreaction of sound waves on the fluid's flow can be expressed in terms of their stress-energy tensor. Using this result in the context of Hawking radiation, we compute the secular effect on the background flow., Comment: 60 pages, 6 figures. Review submitted to "La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento"

We present significant evidence in favour of the holographic conjecture that ``4D black holes localized on the brane found by solving the classical bulk equations in $AdS_5$ are quantum corrected black holes and not classical ones''. The crucial test is the calculation of the quantum correction to the Newtonian potential based on a numerical computation of $$ in Schwarzschild spacetime for matter fields in the zero temperature Boulware vacuum state. For the case of the conformally invariant scalar field the leading order term is found to be $M/45\pi r^3$. This result is equivalent to the result which was previously obtained in the weak-field approximation using Feynman diagrams and which has been shown to be equivalent, via the AdS/CFT duality, to the analogous calculation in Randall-Sundrum braneworlds. This asymptotic behavior was not captured in the analytical approximations for $$ proposed in the literature. The 4D backreaction equations are then used to make a prediction about the existence and the possible spacetime structure of macroscopic static braneworld black holes., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

We investigate the backreaction equations for an acoustic black hole formed in a Laval nozzle under the assumption that the motion of the fluid is one-dimensional. The solution in the near-horizon region shows that as phonons are (thermally) radiated the sonic horizon shrinks and the temperature decreases. This contrasts with the behaviour of Schwarzschild black holes, and is similar to what happens in the evaporation of (near-extremal) Reissner-Nordstrom black holes (i.e. infinite evaporation time). Finally, by appropriate boundary conditions the solution is extended in both the asymptotic regions of the nozzle., Comment: 23 pages, latex, 1 figure; revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev. D

We compare the canonical quantization and the effective action method to derive expectation values of the stress energy tensor for scalar fields conformally coupled to a 2D Schwarzschild black hole spacetime. Particular attention is devoted to the thermal equilibrium Hartle-Hawking state where the striking disagreement of the results may be reconduced to the incomplete knowledge of the effective action. We show how to reconcile the two procedures and find physically meaningful analytical approximate expressions for the stress tensor in the Hartle-Hawking state., Comment: 19 pages, latex; revised version

A massless scalar field minimally coupled to gravity and propagating in the Schwarzschild spacetime is considered. After dimensional reduction under spherical symmetry the resulting 2D field theory is canonically quantized and the renormalized expectation values $< T_{a b} >$ of the relevant energy-momentum tensor operator are investigated. Asymptotic behaviours and analytical approximations are given for $< T_{a b} >$ in the Boulware, Unruh and Hartle-Hawking states. Special attention is devoted to the black-hole horizon region where the WKB approximation breaks down., Comment: LaTeX (revtex), 13 pages, address and some minor misprints corrected

The characteristic features of $$ in the Boulware, Unruh and Hartle-Hawking states for a conformal massless scalar field propagating in the Schwarzschild space-time are obtained by means of effective actions deduced by the trace anomaly. The actions are made local by the introduction of auxiliary fields and boundary conditions are carefully imposed on them in order to select the different quantum states., Comment: 20 pages, latex; misprints corrected and references added

Minimally coupled 4D scalar fields in Schwarzschild space-time are considered. Dimensional reduction to 2D leads to a well known anomaly induced effective action, which we consider here in a local form with the introduction of auxiliary fields. Boundary conditions are imposed on them in order to select the appropriate quantum states (Boulware, Unruh annd Israel-Hartle-Hawking). The stress tensor is then calculated and its comparison with the expected 4D form turns out to be unsuccessful. We also critically discuss in some detail a recent controversial result appeared in the literature on the same topic., Comment: latex, 13 pages; misprints corrected, references added

Recently proposed 2D anomaly induced effective actions for the matter-gravity system are critically reviewed. Their failure to correctly reproduce Hawking's black hole radiation or the stability of Minkowski space-time led us to a modification of the relevant ``quantum'' matter stress energy tensor that allows physically meaningful results to be extracted., Comment: 26 pages, plain latex

In a one parameter family of dilaton gravity theories which allow the coupling of the dilaton to gravity and to a U(1) gauge field to differ, we have found the existence of everywhere regular spacetimes describing black holes hiding expanding universes inside their horizon., Comment: 10 pages, harvmac, 3 figures not included available upon request

We introduce an effective Lagrangian which describes the classical and semiclassical dynamics of spherically symmetric, self-gravitating objects that may populate the Universe at large and small (Planck) scale. These include wormholes, black holes and inflationary bubbles. We speculate that such objects represent some possible modes of fluctuation in the primordial spacetime foam out of which our universe was born. Several results obtained by different methods are encompassed and reinterpreted by our effective approach. As an example, we discuss: i) the gravitational nucleation coefficient for a pair of Minkowski bubbles, and ii) the nucleation coefficient of an inflationary vacuum bubble in a Minkowski background, Comment: 13 pages, no figures, ReVTeX

Following a minisuperspace approach to the dynamics of a spherically symmetric shell, a reduced Lagrangian for the radial degree of freedom is derived directly from the Einstein-Hilbert action. The key feature of this new Lagrangian is its invariance under time reparametrization. Indeed, all classical and quantum dynamics is encoded in the Hamiltonian constraint that follows from that invariance. Thus, at the classical level, we show that the Hamiltonian constraint reproduces, in a simple gauge, Israel's matching condition which governs the evolution of the shell. In the quantum case, the vanishing of the Hamiltonian (in a weak sense), is interpreted as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the physical states, in analogy to the corresponding case in quantum cosmology. Using this equation, quantum tunneling through the classical barrier is then investigated in the WKB approximation, and the connection to vacuum decay is elucidated., Comment: 36 pages, ReVTeX, 10 Figs. in postscript format, in print on Class.& Quant.Grav

By considering charged black hole solutions of a one parameter family of two dimensional dilaton gravity theories, one finds the existence of quantum mechanically stable gravitational kinks with a simple mass to charge relation. Unlike their Einsteinian counterpart (i.e. extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"om), these have nonvanishing horizon surface gravity., Comment: 18 pages, harvmac, 2 figures

Analytical extensions and resulting Penrose diagrams are given for the solutions of a simple 2d dilaton gravity theory describing black holes which are static as viewed by asymptotically accelerated observers., Comment: 20 pages, harvmac, 12 figures, no changes, one reference added