Abstract
Analogue gravity is a research programme which investigates analogues of general relativistic gravitational fields within other physical systems, typically but not exclusively condensed matter systems, with the aim of gaining new insights into their corresponding problems. Analogue models of (and for) gravity have a long and distinguished history dating back to the earliest years of general relativity. In this review article we will discuss the history, aims, results, and future prospects for the various analogue models. We start the discussion by presenting a particularly simple example of an analogue model, before exploring the rich history and complex tapestry of models discussed in the literature. The last decade in particular has seen a remarkable and sustained development of analogue gravity ideas, leading to some hundreds of published articles, a workshop, two books, and this review article. Future prospects for the analogue gravity programme also look promising, both on the experimental front (where technology is rapidly advancing) and on the theoretical front (where variants of analogue models can be used as a springboard for radical attacks on the problem of quantum gravity).
Highlights
I cherish more than anything else the Analogies, my most trustworthy masters
The features of general relativity that one typically captures in an “analogue model” are the kinematic features that have to do with how fields are defined on curved spacetime, and the sine qua non of any analogue model is the existence of some “effective metric” that captures the notion of the curved spacetimes that arise in general relativity. (At the very least, one might wish to capture the notion of the Minkowski geometry of special relativity.) the verbal description above can be converted into a precise mathematical and physical statement, which is the reason that analogue models are of physical interest
By the year 2000, articles on one or another aspect of analogue gravity were appearing at the rate of over 20 per year, and it becomes impractical to summarise more than a selection of them
Summary
I cherish more than anything else the Analogies, my most trustworthy masters. They know all the secrets of Nature, and they ought to be least neglected in Geometry. Analogies have played a very important role in physics and mathematics – they provide new ways of looking at problems that permit cross-fertilization of ideas among different branches of science. Supersonic fluid flow can generate a “dumb hole”, the acoustic analogue of a “black hole”, and the analogy can be extended all the way to mathematically demonstrating the presence of phononic Hawking radiation from the acoustic horizon. This particular example provides (at least in principle) a concrete laboratory model for curved-space quantum field theory in a realm that is technologically accessible to experiment. The list of analogue models is extensive, and in this review we will seek to do justice both to the key models, and to the key features of those models
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