Experimental observation of hyperbolic spacetime dynamics

Jonas Himmel; Coraline Bacq; Krishna Chand Maurya; Max Ehrhardt; Matthias Heinrich; Tom A. W. Wolterink; Pablo Basteiro; Rathindra Nath Das; René Meyer; Tobias Huber-Loyola; Andreas Pfenning; Sven Höfling; Johanna Erdmenger; Alexander Szameit

arXiv · 2606.09501

Experimental observation of hyperbolic spacetime dynamics

Jonas Himmel·Coraline Bacq·Krishna Chand Maurya·Max Ehrhardt·Matthias Heinrich·Tom A. W. Wolterink·Pablo Basteiro·Rathindra Nath Das·René Meyer·Tobias Huber-Loyola·Andreas Pfenning·Sven Höfling·Johanna Erdmenger·Alexander Szameit

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Abstract

Understanding quantum dynamics in curved spacetime is a central challenge at the intersection of quantum mechanics and gravity. Anti-de-Sitter (AdS) spacetime plays a pivotal role in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence, which relates gravitational dynamics in the AdS bulk to a conformal field theory (CFT) living on its boundary. Despite its foundational importance, direct experimental access to dynamical quantum phenomena in Lorentzian AdS spacetime has so far remained out of reach. Here, we report the first experimental emulation of fermionic wave packet dynamics in Lorentzian AdS spacetime using a photonic platform. By mapping the Dirac equation in curved spacetime onto the propagation of light in engineered wave\-guide arrays, we directly observe gravitational confinement of relativistic wave packets and resolve their center-of-mass motion in real time. We identify a characteristic superposition of slow geodesic oscillations governed solely by spacetime curvature and fast Zitterbewegung arising from relativistic particle--antiparticle interference. While the geodesic frequency is independent of fermion mass, the Zitterbewegung frequency exhibits a distinct joint dependence on mass and curvature, revealing a curvature-induced modification of relativistic quantum dynamics. Our results provide the first quantitative experimental access to fermionic bulk dynamics in emulated AdS$_2$ spacetime with Lorentzian signature. This establishes a scalable analog platform that may potentially be used for exploring dynamical aspects of holography.

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Jonas Himmel, Coraline Bacq, Krishna Chand Maurya, Max Ehrhardt, Matthias Heinrich, Tom A. W. Wolterink, Pablo Basteiro, Rathindra Nath Das, René Meyer, Tobias Huber-Loyola, Andreas Pfenning, Sven Höfling, Johanna Erdmenger, Alexander Szameit. 2026-06-08. Experimental observation of hyperbolic spacetime dynamics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.09501

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