MS Seminar (Mathematics - String Theory)

Speaker: Davide Forcella (ENS)
Title: Hydrodynamics, Holographic Optics and Negative Refractive Index
Date (JST): Tue, Nov 09, 2010, 13:15 - 14:45
Place: Seminar Room A
Abstract: In recent years the holographic duality has been applied to model a great variety of physical systems, from the quark-gluon plasma of QCD to condensed matter systems.

Up to now the optical properties of these holographic models have not been systematically investigated.
At the same time, an intense activity has been devoted to the construction of materials that enjoy exotic optical properties, among which a negative refractive index: energy flow and phase velocities of a wave packet are in opposite direction.

Motivated by these discoveries, I will explain some recent results related to the propagation of light inside a medium described holographically in the AdS/CFT correspondence.
In particular I will argue that negative refraction seems to be a quite generic feature of media with a dual gravitational description, and more generically of relativistic hydrodynamic systems at low frequencies.