Experimental tabletop black holes can reveal astrophysical mysteries

Black holes are a fascination of kindergarteners and astronomers alike. Yet these astrophysical objects, which can only be probed indirectly, are incredibly hard to study. To understand them better, researchers are looking into acoustic black holes — an analog equivalent that traps sound waves and can be created in a tabletop experiment.

Coviello et al. investigated whether acoustic black holes can be used to understand the interactions between gravitational waves and astrophysical black holes. In a theoretical setup, the authors explored how to make gravitational wave-like perturbations in a Bose-Einstein condensate. In Bose-Einstein condensates, phonons move as massless scalar particles on an emergent acoustic metric, allowing a setup where an acoustic black hole can have a phonon-trapping event horizon. Using astrophysical gravitational wave data, the authors established a translation framework to better understand the effects of gravitational wave-like perturbations on an experimental black hole’s acoustic horizon.

“We feel excited that this physics can be investigated in currently feasible experimental setups — for example, in ultra-cold atom experiments — offering a new way to study such systems in a controlled setting,” said author Chiara Coviello.

The results could be used to investigate dissipative and reflective effects of gravitational wave-like perturbations on acoustic black holes. The authors believe this will help illuminate universal behaviors and the role of quantum fluctuations in astrophysical black holes.

The authors intend to continue the research with an investigation of the dissipative properties of the acoustic horizon, such as the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio. The results may help provide insights on underlying physical theory and symmetries of astrophysical black holes.

Source: “Gravitational waves and black hole perturbations in acoustic analogues,” by Chiara Coviello, Maria Luisa Chiofalo, Dario Grasso, Stefano Liberati, Massimo Mannarelli, and Silvia Trabucco, AVS Quantum Science (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1116/5.0241559 .