Experimental Modeling of Cosmological Inflation with Metamaterials
Optics
2012-08-09 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
Recently we demonstrated that mapping of monochromatic extraordinary light distribution in a hyperbolic metamaterial along some spatial direction may model the flow of time and create an experimental toy model of the big bang. Here we extend this model to emulate cosmological inflation. This idea is illustrated in experiments performed with two-dimensional plasmonic hyperbolic metamaterials. Spatial dispersion which is always present in hyperbolic metamaterials results in scale-dependent (fractal) structure of the inflationary "metamaterial spacetime". This feature of our model replicates hypothesized fractal structure of the real observable universe.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1111.3300,
title = {Experimental Modeling of Cosmological Inflation with Metamaterials},
author = {Igor I. Smolyaninov and Yu-Ju Hung and Ehren Hwang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1111.3300},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
17 pages, 3 figures. This version is accepted for publication in Physics Letters A