Acoustics in Bose–einstein Condensates as an Example of Broken Lorentz Symmetry

To help focus ideas regarding possible routes to the breakdown of Lorentz invariance, it is extremely useful to explore concrete physical models that exhibit similar phenomena. In particular, acoustics in Bose–Einstein condensates has the interesting property that at low-momentum the phonon dispersion relation can be written in a “relativistic” form exhibiting an approximate “Lorentz invariance”. Indeed all of low-momentum phonon physics in this system can be reformulated in terms of relativistic curved-space quantum field theory. In contrast, high-momentum phonon physics probes regions where the dispersion relation departs from the relativistic form and thus violates Lorentz invariance. This model provides a road-map of at least one route to broken Lorentz invariance. Since the underlying theory is manifestly physical this type of breaking automatically avoids unphysical features such as causality violations. This model hints at the type of dispersion relation that might be expected at ultra-high energies, close to the Planck scale, where quantum gravity effects are suspected to possibly break ordinary Lorentz invariance.