Contributor info: Prof. Theodore Jacobson

Stephen Eckel, Ted Jacobson

SciPost Phys. 10, 064 (2021) · published 11 March 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We revisit the theoretical analysis of an expanding ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate. Starting from the action and integrating over dimensions orthogonal to the phonon's direction of travel, we derive an effective one-dimensional wave equation for azimuthally-travelling phonons. This wave equation shows that expansion redshifts the phonon frequency at a rate determined by the effective azimuthal sound speed, and damps the amplitude of the phonons at a rate given by $\dot{\cal V}/{\cal V}$, where $\cal{V}$ is the volume of the background condensate. This behavior is analogous to the redshifting and "Hubble friction" for quantum fields in the expanding universe and, given the scalings with radius determined by the shape of the ring potential, is consistent with recent experimental and theoretical results. The action-based dimensional reduction methods used here should be applicable in a variety of settings, and are well suited for systematic perturbation expansions.

Ted Jacobson, Manus R. Visser

SciPost Phys. 7, 079 (2019) · published 10 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The static patch of de Sitter spacetime and the Rindler wedge of Minkowski spacetime are causal diamonds admitting a true Killing field, and they behave as thermodynamic equilibrium states under gravitational perturbations. We explore the extension of this gravitational thermodynamics to all causal diamonds in maximally symmetric spacetimes. Although such diamonds generally admit only a conformal Killing vector, that seems in all respects to be sufficient. We establish a Smarr formula for such diamonds and a ``first law" for variations to nearby solutions. The latter relates the variations of the bounding area, spatial volume of the maximal slice, cosmological constant, and matter Hamiltonian. The total Hamiltonian is the generator of evolution along the conformal Killing vector that preserves the diamond. To interpret the first law as a thermodynamic relation, it appears necessary to attribute a negative temperature to the diamond, as has been previously suggested for the special case of the static patch of de Sitter spacetime. With quantum corrections included, for small diamonds we recover the ``entanglement equilibrium'' result that the generalized entropy is stationary at the maximally symmetric vacuum at fixed volume, and we reformulate this as the stationarity of free conformal energy with the volume not fixed.

Yi-Hsieh Wang, Ted Jacobson, Mark Edwards, Charles W. Clark

SciPost Phys. 3, 022 (2017) · published 26 September 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Analog black/white hole pairs, consisting of a region of supersonic flow, have been achieved in a recent experiment by J. Steinhauer using an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate. A growing standing density wave, and a checkerboard feature in the density-density correlation function, were observed in the supersonic region. We model the density-density correlation function, taking into account both quantum fluctuations and the shot-to-shot variation of atom number normally present in ultracold-atom experiments. We find that quantum fluctuations alone produce some, but not all, of the features of the correlation function, whereas atom-number fluctuation alone can produce all the observed features, and agreement is best when both are included. In both cases, the density-density correlation is not intrinsic to the fluctuations, but rather is induced by modulation of the standing wave caused by the fluctuations.