Trapping light by mimicking gravitational lensing
In 1916, Albert Einstein published his famous work on the general theory of relativity, providing a new geometrical description of gravity.The Einsteins theory has significant ramifications for the understanding of the cosmological phenomena.One of the most fascinating predictions of the theory is the bending of light in close proximity to massive stellar objects and the existence of black holes, which are collapsed stars that wrap space and time due to their powerful gravitational pull.Recently, artificial optical materials were proposed to study the various aspects of curved spacetimes such as light trapping and Hawkings radiation.However, the development of experimental toy models that simulate the light propagation in curved spacetimes generated around massive stellar objects remains a challenging problem, especially for a visible light.Here, we propose a spin-coating process that uses a microsphere embedded in a solvent/solute mixture to provide a variable-thickness, structured optical waveguide with a position dependent effective refractive index.This gradient refractive index can mimic the optical effects of curved spacetimes caused by the gravitational fields around massive stellar objects with high precision.Both far-field gravitational lensing effects and the critical phenomenon in close proximity to the photon sphere of degenerated stars or black hole analogues are experimentally demonstrated.Furthermore, the proposed micro-structured waveguide can be used as an omnidirectional absorber with prospective light harvesting and microcavity applications.
Transformation Optics General Relativity Metamaterial Microcavity
C.Sheng H.Liu Y.Wang S.N.Zhu D.A.Genov
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures & Department of Physics ,National Center of Micro College of Engineering and Science, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana 71270, USA
国际会议
昆明
英文
68-72
2014-05-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）