Low-Velocity-Favored Transition Radiation.
Phys Rev Lett
; 131(11): 113002, 2023 Sep 15.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37774266
ABSTRACT
When a charged particle penetrates through an optical interface, photon emissions emerge-a phenomenon known as transition radiation. Being paramount to fundamental physics, transition radiation has enabled many applications from high-energy particle identification to novel light sources. A rule of thumb in transition radiation is that the radiation intensity generally decreases with the decrease of particle velocity v; as a result, low-energy particles are not favored in practice. Here, we find that there exist situations where transition radiation from particles with extremely low velocities (e.g., v/c<10^{-3}) exhibits comparable intensity as that from high-energy particles (e.g., v/c=0.999), where c is the light speed in free space. The comparable radiation intensity implies an extremely high photon extraction efficiency from low-energy particles, up to 8 orders of magnitude larger than that from high-energy particles. This exotic phenomenon of low-velocity-favored transition radiation originates from the interference of the excited Ferrell-Berreman modes in an ultrathin epsilon-near-zero slab. Our findings may provide a promising route toward the design of integrated light sources based on low-energy electrons and specialized detectors for beyond-standard-model particles.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Phys Rev Lett
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
China