Final Report Summary - TRANSFORM OPTICS (Transformation optics: cloaking, perfect imaging and horizons)
Optical materials - a simple piece of glass or a sophisticated metamaterial - appear to transform space and time for light. Transformation optics uses this fact for connecting the science of light - optics - with Einstein's general theory of relativity where space-time is curved to cause gravity. In this ERC project, we demonstrated the physics of the black hole with light - we created stimulated Hawking radiation using ultrashort light pulses in fibre optics. We also made prototypes of curved spaces for applications in Silicon Photonics and analyzed the potential and limits of perfect imaging. Finally, we used the ideas of transformation optics to shed light on the forces of the quantum vacuum.