A classical-mechanical analogue of Hawking black hole radiation

One of the most fascinating phenomena in general relativity is the black hole, and the associated Hawking radiation, which predicts that escape from the hole can be possible for relativistic particles under certain conditions. This phenomenon has been recently highlighted by a quantum condensed matter analogue, using a microscopic lattice model of a Weyl semimetal with tilted nodes. Here, we are motivated to imitate black hole Hawking radiation in a purely classical-mechanical system. We propose a coupled double chain model featuring frequency dispersion that coincides with the tilted Weyl semimetal bandstructure near the vertices. The resulting directional inter-site couplings can be realized by an active mechanical metamaterial with an underlying programmable feedback network.