2022-04-15 Abstract
Title: Tabletop analog black holes to investigate information loss paradox
Speaker: Pisin Chen
Date: Apr 15 at 14:30
Location: R124, Physics Building
Abstract:
The question of whether Hawking evaporation violates unitarity, and therefore resulting in the loss of information, remains unresolved since Hawking’s seminal discovery of black hole evaporation in 1974. So far the investigations remain mostly theoretical since it is almost impossible to settle this paradox through direct astrophysical black hole observations. Accelerating relativistic mirror has long been recognized as a viable setting where the physics mimics that of black hole Hawking radiation. In 2017, Chen and Mourou proposed a novel way to realize such a system by impinging an ultra-intense laser through a plasma target with a predesigned decreasing density. An International AnaBHEL (Analog Black Hole Evaporation via Lasers) Collaboration was then formed with the goal of observing the analog Hawking radiation and shedding lights on the information loss paradox. In this talk we first give an overview of information loss paradox and the proposed resolutions. We then explain the dynamics of the flying plasma mirror and the issues of semi-transparency and finite-size effects specific to the plasma mirror. We will introduce the AnaBHEL design concept and its current R&D status such as that of the single-photon Hawking detector and the supersonic gas jet development.