Controllable optical black hole in left-handed materials

Abstract

Halting and storing light by infinitely decelerating its speed, in the absence of any form of external control, is extremely di+/-cult to imagine. Here we present a theoretical prediction of a controllable optical black hole composed of a planar left-handed material slab. We reveal a criterion that the effective round-trip propagation length in one zigzag path is zero, which brings light to a complete standstill. Both theory and ab initio simulation demonstrate that this optical black hole has degrees flexible controllability for the speed of light. Surprisingly, the ab initio simulations reveal that our scheme has degrees flexible controllability for swallowing, holding, and releasing light.