Optical analogues to the equatorial Kerr–Newman black hole
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s42005-020-0384-5.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.64 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ac15db175d5dde24c06edb9a14670f85
Author(s)
Tinguely, Roy Alexander
Turner, Andrew Patrick
Date Issued
July 2020
Journal
Communications Physics
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Tinguely, Roy Alexander et al. "Optical analogues to the equatorial Kerr–Newman black hole." Communications Physics 3, 1 (July 2020): 120 © 2020 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Optical analogues to black holes allow the investigation of general relativity in a laboratory setting. Previous works have considered analogues to Schwarzschild black holes in an isotropic coordinate system; the major drawback is that required material properties diverge at the horizon. We present the dielectric permittivity and permeability tensors that exactly reproduce the equatorial Kerr–Newman metric, as well as the gradient-index material that reproduces equatorial Kerr–Newman null geodesics. Importantly, the radial profile of the scalar refractive index is finite along all trajectories except at the point of rotation reversal for counter-rotating geodesics. Construction of these analogues is feasible with available ordinary materials. A finite-difference frequency-domain solver of Maxwell’s equations is used to simulate light trajectories around a variety of Kerr–Newman black holes. For reasonably sized experimental systems, ray tracing confirms that null geodesics can be well-approximated in the lab, even when allowing for imperfect construction and experimental error.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Plasma Science and Fusion Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-020-0384-5
