Metamaterial-based model of the Alcubierre warp drive
Optics
2011-09-29 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
Electromagnetic metamaterials are capable of emulating many exotic space-time geometries, such as black holes, rotating cosmic strings, and the big bang singularity. Here we present a metamaterial-based model of the Alcubierre warp drive, and study its limitations due to available range of material parameters. It appears that the material parameter range introduces strong limitations on the achievable "warp speed", so that ordinary magnetoelectric materials cannot be used. On the other hand, newly developed "perfect" bi-anisotropic non-reciprocal magnetoelectric metamaterials should be capable of emulating the physics of warp drive gradually accelerating up to 1/4c.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1009.5663,
title = {Metamaterial-based model of the Alcubierre warp drive},
author = {Igor I. Smolyaninov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1009.5663},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
15 pages, 3 figures, this version is accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.B