Analog Hawking Effect Enhanced by 4th-Order Dispersion Phase Matching
Résumé
Hawking radiation [1], the spontaneous emission of radiation by a black hole, is one of the most important discoveries of the XXth century, uniting gravity and thermodynamics, and providing a key insight into the as yet undiscovered theory of quantum gravity. In 1981, Unruh showed that analogs of Hawking radiation could be found in material systems in which a background flow induces an effective horizon for the quasi-particles [2]. The possibility of demonstrating Hawking-like radiation in optics [3] has attracted much attention. The idea is that a short pulse induces, through the Kerr nonlinearity, a refractive index change δ n which gives rise to an effective horizon for a probe wave at another frequency. Despite considerable progress, both theoretical and experimental [4,5], demonstration of Hawking-like radiation in optics remains elusive because of the requirement of an ultra-high peak power and ultra-short background pulse, combined with the expected smallness of the rate of pair production.
Mots clés
Optical waveguides
Dispersion
Solitons
Frequency modulation
Photonics
Production
Frequency conversion
black holes
optical Kerr effect
quantum gravity
quantum theory
refractive index
effective horizon
Hawking-like radiation
ultra-short background pulse
analog Hawking effect
4th-order dispersion phase
Hawking radiation
black hole
important discoveries
thermodynamics
undiscovered theory
Domaines
Physique Générale [physics.gen-ph]
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