4.1 Classical models
4.1.1 Classical sound
Sound in a moving fluid has already been extensively discussed in Section 2, and we will not repeat such
discussion here. In contrast, sound in a solid exhibits its own distinct and interesting features, notably in
the existence of a generalization of the normal notion of birefringence - longitudinal modes travel at a
different speed (typically faster) than do transverse modes. This may be viewed as an example of an
analogue model which breaks the “light cone” into two at the classical level; as such this model is not
particularly useful if one is trying to simulate special relativistic kinematics with its universal speed
of light, though it may be used to gain insight into yet another way of “breaking” Lorentz
invariance.
4.1.2 Shallow water waves (gravity waves)
A wonderful example of the occurrence of an effective metric in nature is that
provided by gravity waves in a shallow basin filled with liquid [345
] (see
Figure 7).
If one neglects the viscosity and considers an irrotational flow,
, one can write Bernoulli’s
equation in the presence of Earth’s gravity as
Here
is the density of the fluid,
its pressure,
the gravitational acceleration and
a
potential associated with some external force necessary to establish an horizontal flow in the
fluid. We denote that flow by
. We must also impose the boundary conditions that the
pressure at the surface, and the vertical velocity at the bottom, both vanish:
,
.
Once a horizontal background flow is established, one can see that the perturbations of the velocity
potential satisfy
If we now expand this perturbation potential in a Taylor series
it is not difficult to prove [345
] that surface waves with long wavelengths (long compared with the depth of
the basin,
), can be described to a good approximation by
and that this field “sees” an
effective metric of the form
where
. The link between small variations of the potential field and small variations of the
position of the surface is provided by the following equation
The entire previous analysis can be generalised to the case in which the bottom of the basin is not flat, and
the background flow not purely horizontal [345
]. Therefore, one can create different effective metrics for
gravity waves in a shallow fluid basin by changing (from point to point) the background flow velocity and
the depth,
.
The main advantage of this model is that the velocity of the surface waves can very easily be modified
by changing the depth of the basin. This velocity can be made very slow, and consequently, the
creation of ergoregions should be relatively easier than in other models. As described here,
this model is completely classical given that the analogy requires long wavelengths and slow
propagation speeds for the gravity waves. Although the latter feature is convenient for the practical
realization of analogue horizons, it is a disadvantage in trying to detect analogue Hawking
radiation as the relative temperature will necessarily be very low. (This is why, in order to have a
possibility of experimentally observing Hawking evaporation and other quantum phenomena,
one would need to use ultra cold quantum fluids.) However, the gravity wave analogue can
certainly serve to investigate the classical phenomena of mode mixing that underlies the quantum
processes.
4.1.3 Classical refractive index
The macroscopic Maxwell equations inside a dielectric take the well-known form
with the constitutive relations
and
. Here,
is the
permittivity tensor
and
the
permeability tensor of the medium. These equations can be written in a condensed way
as
where
is the electromagnetic tensor,
and (assuming the medium is at rest) the non-vanishing components of the 4th rank tensor
are given
by
supplemented by the conditions that
is antisymmetric on its first pair of indices and antisymmetric on
its second pair of indices. Without significant loss of generality we can ask that
also be symmetric
under pairwise interchange of the first pair of indices with the second pair - thus
exhibits most of the
algebraic symmetries of the Riemann tensor, though this appears to merely be accidental, and not
fundamental in any way.
If we compare this to the Lagrangian for electromagnetism in curved spacetime
we see that in curved spacetime we can also write the electromagnetic equations of motion in the form (126)
where now (for some constant
):
If we consider a static gravitational field we can always re-write it as a conformal factor multiplying an
ultra-static metric
then
The fact that
is independent of the conformal factor
is simply the reflection of the
well-known fact that the Maxwell equations are conformally invariant in (3+1) dimensions. Thus if
we wish to have the analogy (between a static gravitational field and a dielectric medium at
rest) hold at the level of the wave equation (physical optics) we must satisfy the two stringent
constraints
The second of these constraints can be written as
In view of the standard formula for
determinants
this now implies
whence
Comparing this with
we now have:
To rearrange this, introduce the matrix square root
, which always exists because
is real
positive definite and symmetric. Then
Note that if you are given the static gravitational field (in the form
,
) one can always solve to find an equivalent
analogue in terms of permittivity/permeability (albeit an analogue that satisfies the mildly unphysical constraint
).
On the other hand, if you are given permeability and permittivity tensors
and
, then it is only for
that subclass of media that satisfy
that one can perfectly mimic all of the electromagnetic effects
by an equivalent gravitational field. Of course this can be done provided one only considers wavelengths
that are sufficiently long for the macroscopic description of the medium to be valid. In this respect it is
interesting to note that the behaviour of the refractive medium at high frequencies has been used
to introduce an effective cutoff for the modes involved in Hawking radiation [319
]. We shall
encounter this model later on when we shall consider the trans-Planckian problem for Hawking
radiation.
4.1.3.1 Eikonal approximation:
With a bit more work this discussion can be extended to a medium in motion, leading to an extension of
the Gordon metric. Alternatively, one can agree to ask more limited questions by working at
the level of geometrical optics (adopting the eikonal approximation), in which case there is no
longer any restriction on the permeability and permittivity tensors. To see this construct the
matrix
The dispersion relations for the propagation of photons (and therefore the sought for geometrical
properties) can be obtained from the reduced determinant of
(notice that the [full] determinant of
is identically zero as
; the reduced determinant is that associated with the three directions
orthogonal to
). By choosing the gauge
one can see that this reduced determinant
can be obtained from the determinant of the
sub-matrix
. This determinant is
or, after making some manipulations,
To simplify this, again introduce the matrix square roots
and
, which
always exist because the relevant matrices are real positive definite and symmetric. Then define
and
so that
The behaviour of this dispersion relation now depends critically on the way that the eigenvalues of
are distributed.
4.1.3.2 3 degenerate eigenvalues:
If all eigenvalues are degenerate then
, implying
but now with the possibility of a
position dependent proportionality factor (in the case of physical optics the proportionality factor was
constrained to be a position-independent constant). In this case we now easily evaluate
while
That is
with
This last result is compatible with but more general than the result obtained under the
more restrictive conditions of physical optics. In the situation where both permittivity and
permeability are isotropic, (
and
) this reduces to the perhaps more expected
result
4.1.3.3 2 degenerate eigenvalues:
If
has two distinct eigenvalues then the determinant
factorises into a trivial factor of
and two quadratics. Each quadratic corresponds to a distinct effective metric. This is the physical situation
encountered in uni-axial crystals, where the ordinary and extraordinary rays each obey distinct quadratic
dispersion relations [39
]. From the point of view of analogue models this corresponds to a two-metric
theory.
4.1.3.4 3 distinct eigenvalues:
If
has three distinct eigenvalues then the determinant
is the product of a trivial factor
of
and a non-factorizable quartic. This is the physical situation encountered in bi-axial
crystals [39
, 399
], and it seems that no meaningful notion of effective Riemannian metric can be assigned
to this case. (The use of Finsler geometries in this situation is an avenue that may be worth
pursuing [184
].)
4.1.3.5 Abstract linear electrodynamics:
Hehl and co-workers have championed the idea of using the linear constitutive relations of
electrodynamics as the primary quantities, and then treating the spacetime metric (even for flat space) as a
derived concept. See [288, 165, 220, 166].
4.1.3.6 Nonlinear electrodynamics:
In general, the permittivity and permeability tensors can be modified by applying strong
electromagnetic fields (this produces an effectively non-linear electrodynamics). The entire previous
discussion still applies if one considers the photon as the linear perturbation of the electromagnetic field
over a background configuration
The background field
sets the value of
, and
. Equation (126) then
becomes an equation for
. This approach has been extensively investigated by Novello and
co-workers [279, 283, 102, 282, 280, 281, 278, 126].
4.1.3.7 Summary:
The propagation of photons in a dielectric medium characterised by
permeability and
permittivity tensors constrained by
is equivalent (at the level of geometric optics) to the
propagation of photons in a curved spacetime manifold characterised by the ultrastatic metric (155),
provided one only considers wavelengths that are sufficiently long for the macroscopic description of the
medium to be valid. If in addition one takes a fluid dielectric, by controlling its flow one can
generalise the Gordon metric and again reproduce metrics of the Painlevé-Gullstrand type, and
therefore geometries with ergo-regions. If the proportionality constant relating
is position
independent, one can make the stronger statement (144) which holds true at the level of physical
optics.
4.1.4 Normal mode meta-models
We have already seen how linearizing the Euler-Lagrange equations for a single scalar field naturally leads
to the notion of an effective spacetime metric. If more than one field is involved the situation becomes more
complicated, in a manner similar to that of geometrical optics in uni-axial and bi-axial crystals. (This
should, with hindsight, not be too surprising since electromagnetism, even in the presence of a medium, is
definitely a Lagrangian system and definitely involves more than one single scalar field.) A normal mode
analysis based on a general Lagrangian (many fields but still first order in derivatives of those fields) leads
to a concept of refringence, or more specifically multi-refringence, a generalization of the birefringence of
geometrical optics. To see how this comes about, consider a straightforward generalization of the one-field
case.
We want to consider linearised fluctuations around some background solution of the equations of motion.
As in the single-field case we write (here we will follow the notation and conventions of [16
])
Now use this to expand the Lagrangian
Consider the action
Doing so allows us to integrate by parts. As in the single-field case we can use the Euler-Lagrange equations
to discard the linear terms (since we are linearizing around a solution of the equations of motion) and so get
Because the fields now carry indices (
) we cannot cast the action into quite as simple a form as was
possible in the single-field case. The equation of motion for the linearised fluctuations are now read off as
This is a linear second-order system of partial differential equations with position-dependent coefficients.
This system of PDEs is automatically self-adjoint (with respect to the trivial “flat” measure
).
To simplify the notation we introduce a number of definitions. First
This quantity is independently symmetric under interchange of
,
and
,
. We will want to
interpret this as a generalization of the “densitised metric”,
, but the interpretation is not as
straightforward as for the single-field case. Next, define
This quantity is anti-symmetric in
,
. One might want to interpret this as some sort of “spin
connexion”, or possibly as some generalization of the notion of “Dirac matrices”. Finally, define
This quantity is by construction symmetric in (
). We will want to interpret this as some sort of
“potential” or “mass matrix”. Then the crucial point for the following discussion is to realise that
Equation (162) can be written in the compact form
Now it is more transparent that this is a formally self-adjoint second-order linear system of PDEs. Similar
considerations can be applied to the linearization of any hyperbolic system of second-order
PDEs.
Consider an eikonal approximation for an arbitrary direction in field space, that is, take
with
a slowly varying amplitude, and
a rapidly varying phase. In this eikonal
approximation (where we neglect gradients in the amplitude, and gradients in the coefficients of the
PDEs, retaining only the gradients of the phase) the linearised system of PDEs (166) becomes
This has a nontrivial solution if and only if
is a null eigenvector of the matrix
where
. Now, the condition for such a null eigenvector to exist is that
with the determinant to be taken on the field space indices
. This is the natural generalization to the
current situation of the Fresnel equation of bi-refringent optics [39, 224]. Following the analogy
with the situation in electrodynamics (either nonlinear electrodynamics, or more prosaically
propagation in a bi-refringent crystal), the null eigenvector
would correspond to a specific
“polarization”. The Fresnel equation then describes how different polarizations can propagate at different
velocities (or in more geometrical language, can see different metric structures). In particle physics
language this determinant condition
is the natural generalization of the “mass shell”
constraint. Indeed it is useful to define the mass shell as a subset of the cotangent space by
In more mathematical language we are looking at the null space of the determinant of the “symbol” of the
system of PDEs. By investigating
one can recover part (not all) of the information encoded in the
matrices
,
, and
, or equivalently in the “generalised Fresnel equation” (170). (Note
that for the determinant equation to be useful it should be non-vacuous; in particular one should carefully
eliminate all gauge and spurious degrees of freedom before constructing this “generalised Fresnel
equation”, since otherwise the determinant will be identically zero.) We now want to make this
analogy with optics more precise, by carefully considering the notion of characteristics and
characteristic surfaces. We will see how to extract from the the high-frequency high-momentum regime
described by the eikonal approximation all the information concerning the causal structure of the
theory.
One of the key structures that a Lorentzian spacetime metric provides is the notion of causal
relationships. This suggests that it may be profitable to try to work backwards from the causal structure to
determine a Lorentzian metric. Now the causal structure implicit in the system of second-order PDEs given
in Equation (166) is described in terms of the characteristic surfaces, and it is for this reason that we now
focus on characteristics as a way of encoding causal structure, and as a surrogate for some notion of
Lorentzian metric. Note that via the Hadamard theory of surfaces of discontinuity the characteristics can be
identified with the infinite-momentum limit of the eikonal approximation [155]. That is, when extracting
the characteristic surfaces we neglect subdominant terms in the generalised Fresnel equation and
focus only on the leading term in the symbol (
). In particle physics language going to
the infinite-momentum limit puts us on the light cone instead of the mass shell; and it is the
light cone that is more useful in determining causal structure. The “normal cone” at some
specified point
, consisting of the locus of normals to the characteristic surfaces, is defined by
As was the case for the Fresnel Equation (170), the determinant is to be taken on the field indices
. (Remember to eliminate spurious and gauge degrees of freedom so that this determinant is not
identically zero.) We emphasise that the algebraic equation defining the normal cone is the leading term in
the Fresnel equation encountered in discussing the eikonal approximation. If there are
fields in total
then this “normal cone” will generically consist of
nested sheets each with the topology (not
necessarily the geometry) of a cone. Often several of these cones will coincide, which is not particularly
troublesome, but unfortunately it is also common for some of these cones to be degenerate, which is more
problematic.
It is convenient to define a function
on the co-tangent bundle
The function
defines a completely-symmetric spacetime tensor (actually, a tensor density) with
indices
(Remember that
is symmetric in both
and
independently.) Explicitly, using the
expansion of the determinant in terms of completely antisymmetric field-space Levi-Civita tensors
In terms of this
function the normal cone is
In contrast, the “Monge cone” (aka “ray cone”, aka “characteristic cone”, aka “null cone”) is the envelope
of the set of characteristic surfaces through the point
. Thus the “Monge cone” is dual to the “normal
cone”, its explicit construction is given by (Courant and Hilbert [92, volume 2, page 583]):
The structure of the normal and Monge cones encode all the information related with the causal
propagation of signals associated with the system of PDEs. We will now see how to relate this causal
structure with the existence of effective spacetime metrics, from the experimentally favoured single-metric
theory compatible with the Einstein equivalence principle to the most complicated case of pseudo-Finsler
geometries [184
].
The message to be extracted from this rather formal discussion is that effective metrics are rather
general and mathematically robust objects that can arise in quite abstract settings - in the abstract
setting discussed here it is the algebraic properties of the object
that eventually leads to
mono-metricity, multi-metricity, or worse. The current abstract discussion also serves to illustrate, yet
again,
- that there is a significant difference between the levels of physical normal modes (wave
equations), and geometrical normal modes (dispersion relations), and
- that the densitised inverse metric is in many ways more fundamental than the metric itself.