Observation of quantum Hawking radiation and its entanglement in an analogue black hole

By J. Steinhauer. Nature Physics, 2015

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We observe spontaneous Hawking radiation, stimulated by quantum vacuum fluctuations, emanating from an analogue black hole in an atomic Bose–Einstein condensate. Correlations are observed between the Hawking particles outside the black hole and the partner particles inside. These correlations indicate an approximately thermal distribution of Hawking radiation. We find that the high-energy pairs are entangled, while the low-energy pairs are not, within the reasonable assumption that excitations with different frequencies are not correlated. The entanglement verifies the quantum nature of the Hawking radiation. The results are consistent with a driven oscillation experiment and a numerical simulation. Hawking radiation is observed emanating from an analogue black hole, with measurements of the entanglement between the pairs of particles inside and outside the hole offering tantalizing insights into the field of black hole thermodynamics.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dd35930cf3732331c729cabb2d1aeb1c0de18d45