Analogue Gravity Carlos Barcel´o Instituto de Astrof´ısica de Andaluc´ıa(IAA-CSIC) Glorieta de la Astronom´ıa, 18008 Granada, Spain email:
[email protected] http://www.iaa.csic.es/ Stefano Liberati SISSA International School for Advanced Studies Via Bonomea 265, I-34136 Trieste, Italy, and INFN, Sezione di Trieste, Trieste, Italy email:
[email protected] http://www.sissa.it/~liberati Matt Visser School of Mathematics, Statistics, and Operations Research Victoria University of Wellington; PO Box 600 Wellington 6140, New Zealand email:
[email protected] http://www.msor.victoria.ac.nz/~visser Abstract Analogue gravity is a research programme which investigates analogues of general relativis- arXiv:gr-qc/0505065v3 12 May 2011 tic gravitational fields within other physical systems, typically but not exclusively condensed matter systems, with the aim of gaining new insights into their corresponding problems. Ana- logue models of (and for) gravity have a long and distinguished history dating back to the earliest years of general relativity. In this review article we will discuss the history, aims, results, and future prospects for the various analogue models. We start the discussion by presenting a particularly simple example of an analogue model, before exploring the rich history and complex tapestry of models discussed in the literature. The last decade in par- ticular has seen a remarkable and sustained development of analogue gravity ideas, leading to some hundreds of published articles, a workshop, two books, and this review article. Future prospects for the analogue gravity programme also look promising, both on the experimental front (where technology is rapidly advancing) and on the theoretical front (where variants of analogue models can be used as a springboard for radical attacks on the problem of quantum gravity).