Optomechanical signature of a frictionless flow of superfluid light

P. -É. Larré; I. Carusotto

doi:10.1103/physreva.91.053809

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arXiv · 1405.2275

Optomechanical signature of a frictionless flow of superfluid light

P. -É. Larré·I. Carusotto

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Abstract

We propose an experimental setup that should make it possible to reveal the frictionless flow of a superfluid of light from the suppression of the drag force that it exerts onto a material obstacle. In the paraxial-propagation geometry considered here, the photon-fluid dynamics is described by a wave equation analogous to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation of dilute Bose-Einstein condensates and the obstacle consists in a solid dielectric slab immersed into a nonlinear optical liquid. By means of an ab initio calculation of the electromagnetic force experienced by the obstacle, we anticipate that superfluidity is detectable in state-of-the-art experiments from the disappearance of the optomechanical deformation of the obstacle.

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BibTeX RIS

P. -É. Larré, I. Carusotto. 2015-05-14. Optomechanical signature of a frictionless flow of superfluid light. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.91.053809

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