Abstract
Nonlinear waves in defocusing media are investigated in the framework of the hydrodynamic description of light as a photon fluid. The observations are interpreted in terms of an emergent curved spacetime generated by the waves themselves, which fully determines their dynamics. The spacetime geometry emerges naturally as a result of the nonlinear interaction between the waves and the self-induced background flow. In particular, as observed in real fluids, different points of the wave profile propagate at different velocities leading to the self-steepening of the wave front and to the formation of a shock. This phenomenon can be associated to a curvature singularity of the emergent metric. Our analysis offers an alternative insight into the problem of shock formation and provides a demonstration of an analogue gravity model that goes beyond the kinematic level.
Highlights
Nonlinear waves in defocusing media are investigated in the framework of the hydrodynamic description of light as a photon fluid
The general idea is that the propagation of a scalar field on a curved spacetime can be reproduced in condensed-matter systems by studying the evolution of elementary excitations on top of a suitable background configuration
The nonlinear dynamics of a scalar field can be described in terms of an emergent spacetime geometry, which is generated by the field itself and determines its propagation
Summary
Nonlinear waves in defocusing media are investigated in the framework of the hydrodynamic description of light as a photon fluid. Sound waves in flowing fluids propagate in an effective Lorentzian geometry (acoustic metric) which is determined by the physical properties of the flow[2,3,4]. The optical field dynamics can be described as a fluid of interacting photons[28,29] on which linear perturbations, i.e. sound waves, experience an effective curved spacetime determined by the field intensity and phase pattern.
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