Hawking radiation of massive modes and undulations

We compute the analogue Hawking radiation for modes which posses a small wave vector perpendicular to the horizon. For low frequencies, the resulting mass term induces a total reflection. This generates an extra mode mixing that occurs in the supersonic region, which cancels out the infrared divergence of the near horizon spectrum. As a result, the amplitude of the undulation (0-frequency wave with macroscopic amplitude) emitted in white hole flows now saturates at the linear level, unlike what was recently found in the massless case. In addition, we point out that the mass introduces a new type of undulation which is produced in black hole flows, and which is well described in the hydrodynamical regime.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, published versio

Impaired aerobic exercise adaptation in children and adolescents with craniopharyngioma is associated with hypothalamic involvement

OBJECTIVE: Many patients treated for craniopharyngioma (CP) complain of a relative incapacity for physical activity. Whether this is due to an objective decrease in adaptation to exercise is unclear. We assessed exercise tolerance in children with surgically treated CP and appropriate pituitary hormone replacement therapy compared with healthy controls and we examined the potential relationships with hypothalamic involvement, GH replacement, and the catecholamine deficiency frequently observed in these subjects. DESIGN AND METHODS: Seventeen subjects (12 males and five females) with CP and 22 healthy controls (14 males and eight females) aged 15.3+/-2.5 years (7.3-18 years) underwent a standardized cycle ergometer test. Maximum aerobic capacity was expressed as the ratio of VO(2max) to fat-free mass (VO(2max)/FFM), a measure independent of age and fat mass in children. RESULTS: VO(2max)/FFM was 20% lower in children with CP compared with controls (P<0.05), even after adjustment for gender. Children with hypothalamic involvement (n=10) had a higher percentage of fat mass (P<0.05) than those without hypothalamic involvement (n=7) and lower VO(2max)/FFM (P<0.05), whereas children without hypothalamic involvement had VO(2max)/FFM close to that of controls (P>0.05). GH treatment was associated with a significant positive effect on aerobic capacity (P<0.05) only in the absence of hypothalamic involvement. No relationship was found between exercise capacity parameters and daily urine epinephrine excretion or epinephrine peak response to insulin-induced hypoglycemia. CONCLUSIONS: Children with CP have a decrease in aerobic capacity mainly related to hypothalamic involvement. The hypothalamic factors altering aerobic capacity remain to be determined

The imprint of the analogue Hawking effect in subcritical flows

We study the propagation of low-frequency shallow water waves on a one-dimensional flow of varying depth. When taking into account dispersive effects, the linear propagation of long-wavelength modes on uneven bottoms excites new solutions of the dispersion relation which possess a much shorter wavelength. The peculiarity is that one of these new solutions has a negative energy. When the flow becomes supercritical, this mode has been shown to be responsible for the (classical) analog of the Hawking effect. For subcritical flows, the production of this mode has been observed numerically and experimentally, but the precise physics governing the scattering remained unclear. In this work, we provide an analytic treatment of this effect in subcritical flows. We analyze the scattering of low-frequency waves using a new perturbative series, derived from a generalization of the Bremmer series. We show that the production of short-wavelength modes is governed by a complex value of the position: a complex turning point. Using this method, we investigate various flow profiles and derive the main characteristics of the induced spectrum

Rotational superradiant scattering in a vortex flow

When an incident wave scatters off of an obstacle, it is partially reflected and partially transmitted. In theory, if the obstacle is rotating, waves can be amplified in the process, extracting energy from the scatterer. Here we describe in detail the first laboratory detection of this phenomenon, known as superradiance 1, 2, 3, 4. We observed that waves propagating on the surface of water can be amplified after being scattered by a draining vortex. The maximum amplification measured was 14% ± 8%, obtained for 3.70 Hz waves, in a 6.25-cm-deep fluid, consistent with the superradiant scattering caused by rapid rotation. We expect our experimental findings to be relevant to black-hole physics, since shallow water waves scattering on a draining fluid constitute an analogue of a black hole 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, as well as to hydrodynamics, due to the close relation to over-reflection instabilities 11, 12, 13

Toward Forecasting Volcanic Eruptions using Seismic Noise

During inter-eruption periods, magma pressurization yields subtle changes of the elastic properties of volcanic edifices. We use the reproducibility properties of the ambient seismic noise recorded on the Piton de la Fournaise volcano to measure relative seismic velocity variations of less than 0.1 % with a temporal resolution of one day. Our results show that five studied volcanic eruptions were preceded by clearly detectable seismic velocity decreases within the zone of magma injection. These precursors reflect the edifice dilatation induced by magma pressurization and can be useful indicators to improve the forecasting of volcanic eruptions.Comment: Supplementary information: http://www-lgit.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/~fbrengui/brenguier_SI.pdf Supplementary video: http://www-lgit.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/~fbrengui/brenguierMovieVolcano.av

Low-frequency analogue Hawking radiation: the Korteweg–de Vries model

We derive analytic expressions for the low-frequency properties of the analogue Hawking radiation in a general weak-dispersive medium. A thermal low-frequency part of the spectrum is expected even when dispersive effects become significant. We consider the two most common class of weak-dispersive media and investigate all possible anomalous scattering processes due inhomogeneous background flows. We first argue that under minimal assumptions, the scattering processes in near-critical flows are well described by a linearized Korteweg-de Vries equation. Within our theoretical model greybody factors are neglected, that is, the mode co-moving with the flow decouples from the other ones. We also exhibit a flow example with an exact expression for the effective temperature. We see that this temperature coincides with the Hawking one only when the dispersive length scale is much smaller than the flow gradient scale. We apply the same method in inhomogeneous flows without an analogue horizon. In this case, the spectrum coefficients decrease with decreasing frequencies. Our findings are in agreement with previous numerical works, generalizing their findings to arbitrary ow profiles. Our analytical expressions provide estimates to guide ongoing experimental efforts