ESPCI web site
A black hole in your bathtub
I will discuss the possibility to mimic black hole physics in fluid flows. The starting point is an analogy discovered by Unruh between the propagation of sound in a flowing fluid and waves around a black hole. In these analogue setups, it is possible to test various black hole effects.
I will focus on the case of the Hawking effect, through which a black hole loses its mass, and its recent experimental verifications. I will also present a recent water wave experiment, where we have observed the analogue of black hole superradiance, that is, the amplification of waves by extraction of angular momentum from a rotating flow.