Gravitational waves and Black Hole perturbations in acoustic analogues

Phonons in Bose-Einstein condensates propagate as massless scalar particles on top of an emergent acoustic metric. This hydrodynamics/gravity analogy can be exploited to realize acoustic black holes, featuring an event horizon that traps phonons. The authors show that by an appropriate external potential, gravitational wave-like perturbations of the acoustic metric can be produced. Such perturbations can be used to excite an acoustic black hole, which should then relax by phonon emission. (c) 2025 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)