In the context of field theory in curved space-times, it is known that suitable background space-time geometries can trigger instabilities of fields, leading to exponential growth of their (quantum and classical) fluctuations, a phenomenon called vacuum awakening in the quantum context, which in some classical scenarios seeds spontaneous scalarization or vectorization. Despite its conceptual interest, an actual observation in nature of this effect is uncertain since it depends on the existence of fields with appropriate masses and couplings in strong-gravity regimes. Here, we propose analogues for this gravity-induced instability based on nonlinear optics of metamaterials which could, in principle, be observed in laboratory.

• Received 27 November 2019
• Accepted 11 February 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.013281

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society