Virtual Black Holes in Hyperbolic Metamaterials

Optical space in electromagnetic metamaterials may be engineered to emulate various exotic space-time geometries. However, these metamaterial models are limited in many respects. It is believed that real physical space-time strongly fluctuates on the Planck scale. These fluctuations are usually described as virtual black holes. Static metamaterial models introduced so far do not exhibit similar behavior. Here we demonstrate that thermal fluctuations of optical space in hyperbolic metamaterials lead to creation of virtual electromagnetic black holes. This effect is very large if the dielectric component of the metamaterial exhibits critical opalescence.