Optical analog of particle production in gravitational fields

TL;DR

This paper proposes using electromagnetic metamaterial waveguides to create optical analogs of strong gravitational fields, enabling the study of particle production effects and potential searches for axion-like particles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to simulate intense gravitational fields optically, facilitating experimental investigation of particle production phenomena.

Findings

Optical analogs of gravitational fields up to ~10^24 g are achievable.

Waveguide geometries can simulate gravitational field gradients up to ~10^31 s-2.

Potential application in searching for axion-like particles.

Abstract

Strong enough electric field is predicted to spontaneously create electron-positron pairs in vacuum via Schwinger effect. A somewhat similar effect is predicted to occur in sufficiently strong inhomogeneous gravitational fields. However, due to necessity of very large field strength, these effects were never observed in the experiment. Here we demonstrate that optical analogs of very strong gravitational fields (up to ~10^24 g) and very strong gravitational field gradients (up to ~10^31 s-2) may be created in electromagnetic metamaterial waveguides, leading to an optical analog of particle production in gravitational fields. Such waveguide geometries may also potentially be used to search for axion-like particles weakly interacting with electromagnetic field.