Theo Torres, seminar on Analogue gravity: a playground to explore exotic wave effects in the laboratory

Next Wednesday, on November 16, Theo Torres is visiting us and will present a seminar in amphi Gagnepain (TEMIS building, Besançon) at 14:00. The seminar will be in English and is expected to last less than one hour, questions included. Theo is presently a postdoc researcher at LMA Marseille. Before that, he was a doctoral and a post-doctoral researcher in the UK (Nottingham, Sheffield, London) where he worked on wave propagation in heterogeneous media and especially the emulation of black holes using hydrodynamics, optics or superfluids. A Zoom link will be issued later, but please come in person!

Analogue gravity: a playground to explore exotic wave effects in the laboratory

Absract : In 1981, W.G. Unruh discovered a mathematical analogy between waves in condensed matter systems and massless scalar fields in a curved space-time. This discovery founded the field of analogue gravity and offered the possibility to experimentally access fundamental effects otherwise out of reach. A prime example of these are Hawking Radiations. In this talk, I will give an overview of the field of analogue gravity and its evolution since the 80's. In particular, I will illustrate the ideas of the field via the examples of analogue superradiance and quasinormal modes emissions. I will then present recent developments and the new directions that the analogue gravity research program is taking. I will argue that analogue gravity represents an important tool to better understand fundamental effects in gravitational and condensed matter physics alike, and provides fertile grounds for the development of novel ideas.