An optical wormhole from hollow disclinations

TL;DR

This paper explores how liquid crystal films on a catenoid can mimic a conical wormhole's spacetime, revealing unique optical properties and light propagation behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analogy between liquid crystal disclinations and conical wormholes, deriving the effective optical metric and analyzing light geodesics and wave modes.

Findings

Optical metric resembles a 2D section of a conical wormhole spacetime

Light follows geodesics analogous to those in wormhole geometries

Wave modes are influenced by the wormhole-like optical structure

Abstract

We examine the optical properties of two different configurations of an ordered liquid crystal film on a catenoid forming coreless disclinations. We find the effective optical metric from which we obtain the geodesics and wave modes characterizing thus the propagation of light on this surface. We show that the optical metric describes a two-dimensional section of the spacetime of a conical wormhole.