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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
In the talk I will use the correspondence between sound in superfluids and light in curved spacetimes (acoustic metric). I will focus on simple, stable, rotating configurations of superfluids such as a single irrotational vortices, vortex lattices, and giant vortices. By examining sound propagation in the presence of such configurations I will relate the main difficulties of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes to sound-scattering problems. Despite much effort over the last 130 years the problem of sound propagating in the presence of a single vortex does not seem to have been finally settled yet. I will discuss mathematics of sound scattering in superfluids, problems associated with boundary conditions at infinity and at the core, and experiments with strongly rotating BECs where hints for correct solutions to the profound, old dilemmas of QFT in curved spacetimes could be found.
Host: Bogdan Damski