Big Crunch-based omnidirectional light concentrators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel broadband omnidirectional light concentrator inspired by Big Crunch cosmological models, achieving true omnidirectional concentration by ensuring all photon paths terminate at a single point.

Contribution

It proposes and experimentally demonstrates a gravity-inspired optical design based on Big Crunch solutions for perfect omnidirectional light concentration.

Findings

Achieved broadband omnidirectional light concentration

Demonstrated experimental realization of the Big Crunch-inspired design

Ensured all photon paths terminate at a single point

Abstract

Omnidirectional light concentration remains an unsolved problem despite such important practical applications as design of efficient mobile photovoltaic cells. Optical black hole designs developed recently offer partial solution to this problem. However, even these solutions are not truly omnidirectional since they do not exhibit a horizon, and at large enough incidence angles light may be trapped into quasi-stationary orbits around such imperfect optical black holes. Here we propose and realize experimentally another gravity-inspired design of a broadband omnidirectional light concentrator based on the cosmological Big Crunch solutions. By mimicking the Big Crunch spacetime via corresponding effective optical metric we make sure that every photon world line terminates in a single point.