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Silke Weinfurtner

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Silke Weinfurtner
Education
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Nottingham
Doctoral advisorMatt Visser

Silke Weinfurtner is a German-British physicist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. Weinfurtner is best known for her research into black holes and is considered a pioneer in the field of analog gravity.

Career

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Weinfurtner studied theoretical physics at the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, under the direction of quantum physicist Ignacio Cirac. She earned her PhD from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, studying under the supervision of physicist Matt Visser.[1]

In 2017, Weinfurtner and her team built an experiment using a custom water bath to simulate the conditions around a black hole. Weinfurtner traces the origin of the technique to her time working at the International School for Advanced Studies in Italy where she "setup an experiment with a bucket and a bidet". After her postdoc, she went on to work with Bill Unruh, discoverer of the Unruh effect.[2]

Weinfurtner set up her own research group at the University of Nottingham in a space called the "Black Hole Laboratory".[3][4] Her research focuses on trying to mimic the conditions of the Big Bang, using superconducting magnets in a large bathtub to simulate cosmological effects.[5] Comparing real black holes with her analog gravity experiments, Weinfurtner expresses wonder that the "startling mathematical similarities between them that emerge under certain conditions can be exploited", saying that "it just seems like nature threw us a bone when things are really hard".[6] By decreasing the temperature in the water bath, Weinfurtner and her team were able to create a Bose-Einstein condensate, mimicking wave propagation in the early universe.[7]

Awards and honors

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  • In 2012 and 2013, Weinfurtner won the SISSA Research Award for Young Scientists[8]
  • In 2013, Weinfurtner won the Vidi award for "Quantum gravity in table-top experiments"[9]
  • In 2018, Weinfurtner was part of the team that won the third Buchalter Cosmology Prize for their work A New Semiclassical Picture of Vacuum Decay[10]

Selected publications

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Scholia has a profile for Silke Weinfurtner (Q117223594).
  • Sotiriou, Thomas P.; Visser, Matt; Weinfurtner, Silke (2009), "Phenomenologically Viable Lorentz-Violating Quantum Gravity", Physical Review, 102 (25): 251601, arXiv:0904.4464, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.251601
  • Weinfurtner, Silke; Tedford, Edmund W.; Penrice, Matthew C.J.; Unruh, William G.; Lawrence, Gregory A. (2010), "Measurement of Stimulated Hawking Emission in an Analogue System", Physical Review, 106 (2): 021302, arXiv:1008.1911, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.021302
  • Sotiriou, Thomas P.; Visser, Matt; Weinfurtner, Silke (2011), "Spectral Dimension as a Probe of the Ultraviolet Continuum Regime of Causal Dynamical Triangulations", Physical Review, 107 (13): 131303, arXiv:1105.5646, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.131303

References

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  1. ^ "Silke Weinfurtner". GravityLaboratory.com. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  2. ^ "Scientists make waves with black hole research" (Press release). EurekAlert.org. 14 June 2017. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  3. ^ Devlin, Hannah (14 July 2023). "Eureka! Scientists explore mysteries of black holes with hi-tech bathtub". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  4. ^ Brückner, Martin; Isenstadt, Sandy; Wasserman, Sarah, eds. (21 October 2021). Modelwork: The Material Culture of Making and Knowing. University of Minnesota Press. p. 72. ISBN 9781452965420. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  5. ^ Moskvitch, Katia (16 March 2018). "To Understand the Universe, Physicists Are Building Their Own". Wired. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  6. ^ Lewton, Thomas (12 December 2022). "She Turns Fluids Into 'Black Holes' and 'Inflating Universes'". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
  7. ^ Yirka, Bob (27 November 2022). "An early universe analog built in a lab in Germany". Phys.org. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  8. ^ "Dr. Silke Weinfurtner". AcademiaNet. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  9. ^ "Vidi 2012". Dutch Research Council. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
  10. ^ Cimmino, Jhon (6 February 2019). "Annual Buchalter Cosmology Prize Announces Jack Ng as 2018 Winner". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
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