Orateur
Description
Analogue Gravity is a transdisciplinary field that explores and exploits the mathematical correspondence between, on one hand, field propagation in curved spacetime, and on the other, wave propagation in laboratory-based systems. In the long-wavelength limit, where the microscopic particulate nature of matter is lost from view, this correspondence is exact: the system is analogous to a gravitational one, with a background flow engendering an effective spacetime metric that governs the behaviour of wave-like perturbations. Unruh [Phys. Rev. Lett. 46, 1351 (1981)] was the first to suggest a concrete use of this analogy: to experimentally investigate Hawking radiation from black holes, which occur when the flow passes from a subcritical region to a supercritical one. The analogy can thus bring certain gravitational phenomena, hidden from view by practical difficulties, into the realms of observational accessibility via lab-based experiments.
I will give an overview of Analogue Gravity and present some applications to the particular system of water waves, which is being studied at Institut Pprime near Poitiers.
