Manipulating light in a fluid form and then using it to simulate spacetime, physicists expect to unlock our understanding of black holes and other exotic objects.
Supermassive cosmic objects, such as black holes, are very difficult to study directly, but researchers can build useful laboratory analogs using quantum effects.
For example, researchers previously simulated space-time-the fabric of our physical reality-using extremely cold atoms and then populated it with the equivalents of black holes.
Now, a group of investigators from the Kastler-Brossel Laboratory (LKB) in Paris and got use light to create an exceptionally well controlled space-time analog.
For this purpose, they confined the light in a small cavity made of a reflective semiconductor material, where light jumped between the layers of the material and interacted with the electric charges inside.
During this process – detailed in a study recently in the Physical Review Letters – as quantum interactions eventually transformed light into a liquid state of matter.
With this, physicists can use lasers to control the properties of this fluid and sculpt it to have the same geometry as spacetime.
As details, scientists can also manipulate it to create structures equivalent to the horizon of a black hole – The limit on which objects may fall but never return.
Since its “universe” based on light could be controlled extremely well, the team could not only horizons of events, but also similar spacetime structures that are less steep.
Now they hope to use this unique simulation to test how Hawking radiation, which emanates from black holes, changes with the slope of the event horizon. In order to be able to, however, will have to make the experience colder and more isolated, which will enhance the quantum effects inside.
“One of the most extreme results of this experience could be the discovery that some observed black holes are actually impostorsDisse in New Scientist, Maxime Jacquetalso from LKB ”.
