Hawking Radiation in Dispersive Media

Understand

Hawking radiation, despite its presence in theoretical physics for over thirty years, remains elusive and undetected.

• It also suffers, in its original context of gravitational black holes, from conceptual difficulties.
• Of particular note is the trans-Planckian problem, which is concerned with the apparent origin of the radiation in absurdly high frequencies.
• In order to gain better theoretical understanding and, it is hoped, experimental verification of Hawking radiation, much study is being devoted to systems which model the spacetime geometry of black holes, and which, by analogy, are also thought to emit Hawking radiation.