Experimental Modeling of Cosmological Inflation with Metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental model using hyperbolic metamaterials to simulate cosmological inflation, capturing scale-dependent fractal structures akin to the universe's hypothesized fractal nature.

Contribution

It extends previous models to emulate cosmological inflation using 2D plasmonic hyperbolic metamaterials, incorporating spatial dispersion effects.

Findings

Demonstrated scale-dependent fractal structures in the metamaterial model

Replicated features of the hypothesized fractal universe

Extended the toy model to include inflationary dynamics

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.