Tabletop circuit mimics rotating black hole, yields 7.8 dB gain

Researchers at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center published on July 8, 2026 in Nature a report showing a stationary electronic circuit can amplify electromagnetic waves by reproducing the physics of rotating systems. The paper lists Hadiseh Nasari, Hady Moussa, Yoshiaki Kasahara, Arno Thielens and Andrea Alù as authors.

The experiment used a ring-shaped network of electronic resonators whose properties were changed in a rapid, timed sequence. That time-dependent modulation created a traveling pattern around the ring so incoming waves experienced the circuit as if it were rotating at ultrafast speed. The outgoing signal carried 7.8 decibels more energy than the incoming signal.

The team describes the effect as an implementation of rotational superradiance, an idea that links back to Roger Penrose’s 1969 proposal for extracting energy from a rotating black hole and Yakov Zel’dovich’s later extension of the concept to waves. The authors named the observed behavior “Floquet rotational super‑radiance,” referencing Floquet theory for systems driven periodically in time.

Co-author Hady Moussa summarized the result: “Waves with the appropriate rotational characteristics extracted energy from the system and became amplified, reproducing the essential physics of the Penrose‑Zel’dovich process.” Principal investigator Andrea Alù described the approach as “a new method of wave-matter interaction” that provides “broadband selective amplification.”

Earlier laboratory demonstrations of rotational superradiance used physically spinning media, including water vortices in 2017, rotating acoustic disks in 2020 and rotating metallic cylinders in 2024. The CUNY experiment differs by synthesizing effective rotation through rapid temporal modulation, eliminating the need for moving parts.

The researchers report the modulated circuit produced amplification across a range of frequencies. The project received support from the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation. The paper presents the setup as a platform for further experiments that investigate wave extraction and controlled amplification in stationary systems.