Analogue black hole lightring and its resonances in an optical fiber
Abstract
We demonstrate the complete observation of a black-hole lightring resonance in an optical analogue. To do so, we generalize the concept of the photon sphere to non-stationnary systems by showing that the lightring is associated to a spatiotemporal caustic and that its complex frequency is determined by the propagation and divergence of this caustic. For an optical soliton acting as an analogue black-hole potential, we predict a characteristic spectral plateau whose boundaries are set by the real part of the lightring frequency, while its spectral decay is governed by the imaginary part. Using a pump-probe experiment in a 5-km-long dispersion-shifted fiber, we observe these signatures for two distinct pump wavelengths. The measured spectra agree with numerical simulations and with the predicted lightring-mode profile, providing direct access to both the oscillatory and decay properties of the resonance. Our results establish a direct experimental connection between black-hole lightrings, spacetime caustics, and quasinormal-mode spectroscopy in a dispersive analogue system.
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BibTeX
@misc{terrier2026analogue,
title = {{Analogue black hole lightring and its resonances in an optical fiber}},
author = {R. Terrier and J. Fatome and B. Kibler and T. Torres},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.01706},
eprint = {2610.01706},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01706},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Analogue black hole lightring and its resonances in an optical fiber
AU - R. Terrier
AU - J. Fatome
AU - B. Kibler
AU - T. Torres
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.01706
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01706
AB - We demonstrate the complete observation of a black-hole lightring resonance in an optical analogue. To do so, we generalize the concept of the photon sphere to non-stationnary systems by showing that the lightring is associated to a spatiotemporal caustic and that its complex frequency is determined by the propagation and divergence of this caustic. For an optical soliton acting as an analogue black-hole potential, we predict a characteristic spectral plateau whose boundaries are set by the real part of the lightring frequency, while its spectral decay is governed by the imaginary part. Using a pump-probe experiment in a 5-km-long dispersion-shifted fiber, we observe these signatures for two distinct pump wavelengths. The measured spectra agree with numerical simulations and with the predicted lightring-mode profile, providing direct access to both the oscillatory and decay properties of the resonance. Our results establish a direct experimental connection between black-hole lightrings, spacetime caustics, and quasinormal-mode spectroscopy in a dispersive analogue system.
ER -