Again, these processes have a purely kinematical origin so they are perfectly suitable for being reproduced in an analogue model. Regarding these processes, the simplest geometry that one can reproduce, thinking of analogue models based on fluid flows, is that of the draining bathtub of Section 2. Of course, this metric does not exactly correspond to Kerr geometry, nor even to a section of it [401]. However, it is qualitatively similar. It can be used to simulate both Penrose’s classical process and quantum super-radiance as these effects do not depend on the specific multipole decomposition of Kerr’s geometry, but only on its rotating character. A specific experimental setup has been put forward by Schützhold and Unruh using gravity waves in a shallow basin mimicking an ideal draining bathtub [345]. Equivalently to what happens with Kerr black holes, this configuration is classically stable (in the linear regime) [31]. A word of caution is in order here: Interactions of the gravity surface waves with bulk waves (neglected in the analysis) could cause the system to become unstable [415]. This instability has no counterpart in standard general relativity (though it might have one in braneworld theories). Super-resonant scattering of waves in this rotating sink configuration, or in a simple purely rotating vortex, could in principle be observed in this and other analogue models. There are already several articles dealing with this problem [25, 27, 26, 64, 113, 237].
A related phenomenon one can consider is the black-hole bomb mechanism [312]. One would only have to surround the rotating configuration by a mirror for it to become grossly unstable. What causes the instability is that those in-going waves that are amplified when reflected in the ergosphere would then in turn be reflected back toward the ergoregion, due to the exterior mirror, thus being amplified again, and so on.
An interesting phenomenon that appears in many condensed matter systems is the existence of
quantised vortices. The angular momentum of these vortices comes in multiples of some fundamental unit
(typically or something proportional to
). The extraction of rotational energy by a Penrose process
in these cases could only proceed via finite-energy transitions. This would supply an additional specific
signature to the process. In such a highly quantum configuration it is also important to look
for the effect of having high-energy dispersion relations. For example, in BECs, the radius of
the ergoregion of a single quantised vortex is of the order of the healing length, so one cannot
directly associate an effective Lorentzian geometry to this portion of the configuration. Any
analysis that neglects the high energy terms is not going to give any sensible result in these
cases.
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