Experimental studies of nonlinear optics of self-assembled hyperbolic metamaterials

Sub-wavelength confinement of light in nonlinear hyperbolic metamaterials due to formation of spatial solitons has attracted much recent theoretical attention because of its seemingly counter-intuitive behavior. In order to achieve self-focusing in a hyperbolic wire medium, a nonlinear self-defocusing Kerr medium must be used as a dielectric host. It was demonstrated that this behavior finds natural explanation in terms of analogue gravity in effective “optical spacetime”, which can be used to describe nonlinear optics of a hyperbolic wire medium. In this work we will report first experimental observation of this effect using iron-cobalt ferrofluid-based self-assembled hyperbolic metamaterials subjected to external magnetic field.