Metamaterial-based model of the Alcubierre warp drive

TL;DR

This paper models the Alcubierre warp drive using electromagnetic metamaterials, showing limitations with current materials and proposing advanced metamaterials that could emulate warp drive physics up to a quarter of the speed of light.

Contribution

It introduces a metamaterial-based model of the warp drive and analyzes the material parameter constraints affecting achievable warp speeds.

Findings

Ordinary magnetoelectric materials are insufficient for warp drive emulation.

Perfect bi-anisotropic non-reciprocal metamaterials can emulate warp drive physics.

Potential to simulate warp drive acceleration up to 1/4c.

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.