Frequency converter implementing an optical analogue of the cosmological redshift

Abstract

According to general relativity, the frequency of electromagnetic radiation is altered by the expansion of the universe. This effect--commonly referred to as the cosmological redshift--is of utmost importance for observations in cosmology. Here we show that this redshift can be reproduced on a much smaller scale using an optical analogue inside a dielectric metamaterial with time-dependent material parameters. To this aim, we apply the framework of transformation optics to the Robertson-Walker metric. We demonstrate theoretically how perfect redshifting or blueshifting of an electromagnetic wave can be achieved without the creation of sidebands with a device of finite length.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Optical Cloaking with Non-Magnetic Metamaterials
• Optical Hyperlens: Far-field imaging beyond the diffraction limit
• Dielectric Optical Cloak
• Fiber-optical analogue of the event horizon
• Design of Electromagnetic Cloaks and Concentrators Using Form-Invariant Coordinate Transformations of Maxwell's Equations
• General Relativity in Electrical Engineering
• Cloaking of Matter Waves
• Electromagnetic radiation in a time-varying background medium

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Trapping light by mimicking gravitational lensing
• Effective material parameter retrieval for thin sheets: theory and application to graphene, thin silver films, and single-layer metamaterials
• Definite photon deflections of topological defects in metasurfaces and symmetry-breaking phase transitions with material loss
• Creating electromagnetic cavities using transformation optics
• Experimental quantum cosmology in time-dependent optical media
• Metamaterials Mimicking Dynamic Spacetime, D-brane and Noncommutativity in String Theory
• Time Circular Birefringence in Time-Dependent Magnetoelectric Media
• Inverse problem in transformation optics
• Effects of quenching protocols based on parametric oscillators