Analogue Gravity and ultrashort laser pulse filamentation

Optical pulse propagation in nonlinear Kerr media finds an elegant description in terms of particular spacetime metrics. By adopting the language of general relativity and applying standard reasoning developed in the context of quantum fields in curved space-time geometries we may expect to observe effects analogous to Hawking radiation. We discuss recent advances in this field and the application of ultrashort laser pulse filaments for the production of photons by excitation of the electromagnetic quantum vacuum