A new kind of black hole analog could tell us something about the elusive radiation theoretically emitted by a real hole. Using a single-order chain of atoms to model a black hole’s event horizon, a team of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we call Hawking radiation – particles born from perturbations in quantum fluctuations caused by the black hole’s refraction in space. time.

They say this could help resolve the contradictions between two currently irreconcilable frameworks for describing the universe: general relativity, which describes gravitational behavior as a continuous field known as spacetime; and quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of individual particles using probability mathematics.

For a single universally applicable theory of quantum gravity, these two incompatible theories must somehow find a way to agree. This is where black holes originate – possibly the strangest, most extreme objects in the universe. These massive objects are so dense that at a certain distance from the black hole’s center of mass, no velocity in the universe is sufficient to escape. It’s not even the speed of light.

This distance, which varies with the mass of the black hole, is called the event horizon. When an object crosses a boundary, we can only imagine what happens because nothing comes back with important information about its fate. But in 1974, Stephen Hawking suggested that the interruption of quantum fluctuations caused by the event horizon gave rise to a type of radiation very similar to heat.

If this Hawking radiation exists, it’s too weak for us to detect. We may never be able to pick it out from the hissing static of the universe. However, in laboratory conditions, we can investigate the properties of a black hole by creating analogies. This has been done before, but now a team led by Lotte Mertens from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands has done something new.

A one-dimensional chain of atoms served as a pathway for electrons to “jump” from one location to another. Physicists can adjust the ease with which this jump occurs, creating a kind of event horizon that interferes with the wave-like nature of electrons, causing certain properties to be lost.

The team said that the effect of this false event horizon only causes a temperature rise that matches the theoretical expectation of an equivalent black hole system when part of the chain goes beyond the event horizon. This could mean that entanglement of particles crossing the event horizon plays an important role in the generation of Hawking radiation.

The simulated Hawking radiation was thermal only for a certain range of hop amplitude and in models that started by simulating a space-time assumed to be “flat”. This indicates that Hawking radiation can be thermal only in a few cases, and also when there is a change in the curvature of space-time due to the gravitational force.

It’s not clear what this means for quantum gravity, but the model offers a way to study the appearance of Hawking radiation in an environment unaffected by the wild dynamics of black hole formation. Because it’s so simple, the researchers say it can be used in a wide variety of experimental settings.

“This could pave the way for exploring fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics as well as gravity and warped space-time under different condensed matter conditions,” the researchers write.