Laval nozzle as an acoustic analogue of a massive field

Abstract

We study a gas flow in the Laval nozzle, which is a convergent-divergent tube that has a sonic point in its throat. We show how to obtain the appropriate form of the tube, so that the acoustic perturbations of the gas flow in it satisfy any given wavelike equation. With the help of the proposed method we find the Laval nozzle, which is an acoustic analogue of the massive scalar field in the background of the Schwarzschild black hole. This gives us a possibility to observe in a laboratory the quasinormal ringing of the massive scalar field, which, for special set of the parameters, can have infinitely long-living oscillations in its spectrum.