SIGRAV graduate school in contemporary relativity and gravitational physics

IX edition
Analogue Gravity
Villa Olmo, Como, Italy, 16-21 May 2011
http://www.centrovolta.it/sigrav2011/

PROGRAM

Our knowledge of the world that surrounds us is characterized by a strong division into sectors, and Physics is no exception. Yet, remarkably, this knowledge is also streaked by "fils rouges" that connect apparently unrelated phenomena. This allows us to understand and study the physics of one area using   "analogue" systems that are connected by a unifying physical concept. Analogue gravity is the study of certain aspects of gravitational interactions, most notably Hawking radiation emitted from black holes, as predicted more than 35 years ago by S. Hawking. Since the first studies initiated by W. Unruh in the early eighties, black hole and horizon analogues have been identified in a number of systems ranging from flowing fluids to flowing dielectrics. The field has made great progress in the past years and the first experimental results are now maturing. The school will give a general overview of the field of Analogue Gravity, of its main and most recent achievements and will propose new challenges and open questions that are looking for answers.

Courses

• Survey of analogue space-times (4 hours)
Matt Visser, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

• Black holes and Hawking radiation (4 hours)
Theodore Jacobson, University of Maryland, USA

• Fundamental quantum effects in the laboratory? (3 hours)
Ralf Schützhold, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany

• Dumb holes - what are they, how do they work (3 hours)
William Unruh, University of British Colombia, Canada

• Analogue gravity, Hawking radiation and black hole lasers in Bose-Einstein condensates (3 hours)
Renaud Parentani, Université Paris-Sud 11, France

• Analogue gravity models in dielectrics (3 hours)
Ulf Leonhardt, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK 

Special lectures

• Astrophysical black holes: evidence of an horizon? (2 hours)
Monica Colpi, Università di Milano Bicocca, Italy

• Water wave analogues of black holes (2 hours)
Germain Rousseaux, CNRS, Université de Nice, France

• Topology, thermodynamics and dynamics of quantum vacuum in effective theory (2 hours)
Grigori Volovik, Aalto University School of Science and Technology, Finland

• Hawking emission and quantum correlations (2 hours)
Iacopo Carusotto, Università di Trento, Italy

• Photon emission by refractive index perturbations in dielectrics (2 hours)
Daniele Faccio, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

• Lorentz breaking EFT and observational tests (2 hours)
Stefano Liberati, SISSA, Trieste, Italy

• Hawking's thermal hypothesis verified in an analogue gravity system (1 hour)
Silke Weinfurtner, SISSA, Trieste, Italy