Analogue gravity experiments with light in optical fibres

Dr Friedrich König
St. Andrews University 

Analogue gravity experiments with light in optical fibres

Analogue gravity aims to mimic physical processes that occur in the interplay between general relativity and field theory in a controlled laboratory environment. The goal is to gain insights into phenomena that are hard or impossible to observe in a purely gravitational context, i.e. in astrophysics. These are in particular situations of strong gravitational interactions, important quantum effects, or extreme length scales. In this talk I will describe how ultrashort optical pulses in fibres can generate an analogue of the event horizon and lead to the observation of the analogue Hawking effect [1]. In another approach, wave emission from the light ring of a black hole, as observed in the LIGO collaboration, can be modelled with a fibre optical analogue [2].

[1] Philbin et al., Science 319,1367-1370 (2008).
[2] Burgess et al.. Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 053802 (2024).