Testing Hawking radiation in laboratory black hole analogues

Back in 1974, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking amazed the physics world with his theory of Hawking radiation, which suggested that rather than being black, black holes should glow slightly due to quantum effects near the black hole’s event horizon. Rather than observing Hawking radiation made by horizons, as the authors themselves found out later, they had, in fact, observed horizon-less radiation created by their light pulses, as they exceeded the phase velocity of light for other frequencies. The study carried out by Leonhardt and his colleagues is an important contribution to the physics field, as it provides the first laboratory demonstration of Hawking radiation in optics.

Source: phys.org