- Editors' Suggestion
- Letter
Observation of self-oscillating supersonic flow across an acoustic horizon in two dimensions
Phys. Rev. A 112, L031301 – Published 2 September, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/t2sn-kx99
Abstract
We report observation of self-oscillating supersonic flows in a two-dimensional atomic superfluid. By imposing a local particle sink with strong loss, we induce a convergent radial flow with a spatially bounded supersonic region, forming an acoustic analog of a black-hole horizon and an inner horizon around the sink. The observed superflow appears to be modulated by quasiperiodic bursts of superluminal signals. We measure their frequencies and find agreement with numerical simulations of the frequencies of ring soliton oscillations within the black-hole horizon. The solitons seen in the simulations are emitted from the region between the two horizons in a process that we attribute to the Landau instability. The presented experiment demonstrates a new method for creating supersonic flows in atomic superfluids, which may find applications in quantum simulations of curved spacetime, supersonic turbulence, and self-oscillating dynamics in dissipative many-body systems.
