More than half a century ago, Sir Roger Penrose envisioned a scenario in which energy could be extracted from a black hole spinning at extreme speeds: a particle entering the ergosphere — the region of space dragged around by a rotating black hole — could split in two, with one part falling in while the other escaped carrying away more energy than it arrived with. Physicist Yakov Zel’dovich later predicted that a wave interacting with a sufficiently fast rotating object could be amplified the same way.

Now, researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) have brought that theoretical construct into the lab. In a paper published in Nature, the team demonstrates a new approach to wave amplification through interaction with rotating bodies — without actually rotating anything.

Synthetic Rotation, Real Physics

Rather than mechanically spinning matter, the team engineered a radio-frequency device whose properties are modulated in space and time to mimic spinning — creating a synthetic form of ultrafast rotation that reaches speeds far beyond what any mechanical system could achieve.

“Our approach facilitates a new method of wave–matter interaction in which waves with selected rotational properties extract energy from synthetic time-engineered rotation, producing a form of broadband selective amplification.”

Andrea Alù, Distinguished Professor and Einstein Professor of Physics, CUNY Graduate Center

The researchers built a ring-shaped network of electronic resonators whose properties were rapidly modulated in a carefully timed sequence, producing a traveling pattern around the ring. The device itself never moved — but electromagnetic waves sent into it behaved as though they were interacting with an object spinning at ultrafast speed.

“Waves with the appropriate rotational characteristics extracted energy from the system and became amplified, reproducing the essential physics of the Penrose–Zel’dovich process. Our approach relies on engineered metamaterials that are designed to control how waves propagate.”

Hady Moussa, former PhD student, CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative

Because the synthetic rotation can simulate movement effectively beyond the speed of light, it gives researchers a controlled way to study extreme physical regimes that would otherwise remain completely inaccessible in a laboratory setting.

“This successful experiment moves ideas about extreme rotational dynamics from theory to practice and creates a versatile experimental platform for exploring a broad range of phenomena at the intersection of astrophysics, wave physics, and quantum science. The work has implications for advances in fundamental science and in communications, optics and photonics.”

Hadiseh Nasari, lead author, CUNY ASRC Photonics Initiative

Looking ahead, the team hopes to adapt the findings into practical technologies, and believes the same concepts can extend to photonic and quantum platforms — opening new ways to manipulate light, process information, and study wave phenomena inspired by the universe’s most extreme environments.

The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the Simons Foundation.

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The study, “Observation of Floquet rotational super-radiance,” was published July 8, 2026, in Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10725-y).