No Arabic abstract
We study from the perspective of quantum information scrambling an acoustic black hole modelled by two semi-infinite, stationary, one dimensional condensates, connected by a spatial step-like discontinuity, and flowing respectively at subsonic and supersonic velocities. We develop a simple analytical treatment based on Bogolyubov theory of quantum fluctuations which is sufficient to derive analogue Hawking emission, and we compute out-of-time order correlations (OTOCs) of the Bose density field. We find that sonic black holes are slow scramblers contrary to their astrophysical counterparts: this manifests in a power law growth $propto t^2$ of OTOCs in contrast to the exponential increase in time expected for fast scramblers.
We study information scrambling, as diagnosed by the out-of-time order correlations (OTOCs), in a system of large spins collectively interacting via spatially inhomogeneous and incommensurate exchange couplings. The model is realisable in a cavity QED system in the dispersive regime. Fast scrambling, signalled by an exponential growth of the OTOCs, is observed when the couplings do not factorise into the product of a pair of local interaction terms, and at the same time the state of the spins points initially coplanar to the equator of the Bloch sphere. When one of these conditions is not realised, OTOCs grow algebraically with an exponent sensitive to the orientation of the spins in the initial state. The impact of initial conditions on the scrambling dynamics is attributed to the presence of a global conserved quantity, which critically slows down the evolution for initial states close to the poles of the Bloch sphere.
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.
I present a microscopic description of Hawking radiation in sonic black holes. A one-dimensional Fermi-degenerate liquid squeezed by a smooth barrier forms a transonic flow, a sonic analogue of a black hole. The quantum treatment of the non-interacting case establishes a close relationship between the Hawking radiation and quantum tunnelling through the barrier. Quasi-particle excitations appear at the barrier and are then radiated with a thermal distribution in exact agreement with Hawkings formula. The signature of the radiation can be found in the dynamic structure factor, which can be measured in a scattering experiment. The possibility for experimental verification of this new transport phenomenon for ultra-cold atoms is discussed.
Motivated by the question of whether all fast scramblers are holographically dual to quantum gravity, we study the dynamics of a non-integrable spin chain model composed of two ingredients - a nearest neighbor Ising coupling, and an infinite range $XX$ interaction. Unlike other fast scrambling many-body systems, this model is not known to be dual to a black hole. We quantify the spreading of quantum information using an out-of time-ordered correlator (OTOC), and demonstrate that our model exhibits fast scrambling for a wide parameter regime. Simulation of its quench dynamics finds that the rapid decline of the OTOC is accompanied by a fast growth of the entanglement entropy, as well as a swift change in the magnetization. Finally, potential realizations of our model are proposed in current experimental setups. Our work establishes a promising route to create fast scramblers.
We analyse the classical configurations of a bootstrapped Newtonian potential generated by homogeneous spherically symmetric sources in terms of a quantum coherent state. We first compute how the mass and mean wavelength of these solutions scale in terms of the number of quanta in the coherent state. We then note that the classical relation between the ADM mass and the proper mass of the source naturally gives rise to a Generalised Uncertainty Principle for the size of the gravitational radius in the quantum theory. Consistency of the mass and wavelength scalings with this GUP requires the compactness remains at most of order one even for black holes, and the corpuscular predictions are thus recovered, with the quantised horizon area expressed in terms of the number of quanta in the coherent state. Our findings could be useful for analysing the classicalization of gravity in the presence of matter and the avoidance of singularities in the gravitational collapse of compact sources.