Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.
To add your name to the Quantum Lunch email list, contact Charlotte Lehman

Thursday, August 12, 2010
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Piotr Marecki (Duisburg University)

Technical Host: Bogdan Damski

TOPIC: What does rotation of superfluids tell us about quantum fields in rotating spacetimes?

Abstract
In the talk I will use the correspondence between sound in superfluids and light in curved spacetimes (acoustic metric). I will focus on simple, stable, rotating configurations of superfluids such as a single irrotational vortices, vortex lattices, and giant vortices. By examining sound propagation in the presence of such configurations I will relate the main difficulties of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes to sound-scattering problems. Despite much effort over the last 130 years the problem of sound propagating in the presence of a single vortex does not seem to have been finally settled yet. I will discuss mathematics of sound scattering in superfluids, problems associated with boundary conditions at infinity and at the core, and experiments with strongly rotating BECs where hints for correct solutions to the profound, old dilemmas of QFT in curved spacetimes could be found.