SPEAKER: Silke Weinfurtner (Nottingham University)
ABSTRACT: There is an analogy between the propagation of fields in the vicinity of astrophysical black holes and the that of small excitations in fluids and superfluids. This analogy allows one to test, challenge and verify, in tabletop experiments, the elusive processes of black hole mass and angular momentum loss. I will first present a brief overview on analogue black holes, and then discuss in more detail some of my earlier and more recent experimental and theoretical results on the subject. In particular I will present some first data collected from our new experimental setup showing the scattering of plane waves with an analogue rotating black hole.