3.3 Motivation
The motivation for these investigations (both historical and current) is rather mixed. In modern
language the reasons to investigate analogue models are:
- Partly to use condensed matter to gain insight into classical general relativity.
- Partly to use condensed matter to gain insight into curved-space quantum field theory.
- Partly to develop an observational window on curved-space quantum field theory.
- Partly to use classical general relativity to gain insight into condensed matter physics.
- Partly (much more tenuous) to gain insight into new and radically different ways of dealing
with “quantum gravity”.