分类： 光学 >> 量子光学 提交时间： 2023-02-20
摘要： Free-electron radiation results from the interaction between swift electrons and the local electromagnetic environment. Recent advances in material technologies provide powerful tools to control light emission from free electrons and may facilitate many intriguing applications of free-electron radiation in particle detections, lasers, quantum information processing, etc. Here, we provide a brief overview on the recent theoretical developments and experimental observations of spontaneous free-electron radiation in various structured environments, including two-dimensional materials, metasurfaces, metamaterials, and photonic crystals. We also report on research progresses on the stimulated free-electron radiation that results from the interaction between free electrons and photonic quasi-particles induced by the external field. Moreover, we provide an outlook of potential research directions for this vigorous realm of free-electron radiation.
分类： 光学 >> 量子光学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Jialin Chen
Ruoxi Chen
Zheng Gong
Hao Hu
Yi Yang
Xinyan Zhang
Chan Wang
Ido Kaminer
Hongsheng Chen
Baile Zhang
Xiao Lin
摘要： 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 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<0.001) exhibits comparable intensity as that from high-energy particles (e.g. v/c=0.999), where c is light speed in free space. The comparable radiation intensity implies an extremely high photon extraction efficiency from low-energy particles, up to eight orders of magnitude larger than that from high-energy particles. This exotic phenomenon of low-velocity-favored transition radiation originates from the excitation of Ferrell-Berreman modes in epsilon-near-zero materials. Our findings may provide a promising route towards the design of integrated light sources based on low-energy electrons and specialized detectors for beyond-standard-model particles.
分类： 光学 >> 量子光学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Yuhan Zhong
Chan Wang
Chenxu Bian
Xuhuinan Chen
Jialin Chen
Xingjian Zhu
Hao Hu
Tony Low
Siyuan Dai
Hongsheng Chen
Baile Zhang
Xiao Lin
摘要： Directionally molding the near-field and far-field radiation lies at the heart of nanophotonics and is crucial for applications such as on-chip information processing and chiral quantum networks. The most fundamental model for radiating structures is a dipolar source located inside a homogeneous matter. However, the influence of matter on the directionality of dipolar radiation is oftentimes overlooked, especially for the near-field radiation. We show that the dipole-matter interaction is intrinsically asymmetric and does not fulfill the duality principle, originating from the inherent asymmetry of Maxwell equations, i.e., electric charge and current are ubiquitous but their magnetic counterparts are non-existent to elusive. Moreover, we find that the asymmetric dipole-matter interaction could offer an enticing route to reshape the directionality of not only the near-field radiation but also the far-field radiation. As an example, both the near-field and far-field radiation directionality of Huygens dipole (located close to a dielectric-metal interface) would be reversed, if the dipolar position is changed from the dielectric region to the metal region.
分类： 光学 >> 量子光学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Xiao Lin
Hao Hu
Sajan Easo
Yi Yang
Yichen Shen
Kezhen Yin
Michele Piero Blago
Ido Kaminer
Baile Zhang
Hongsheng Chen
John Joannopoulos
Marin Soljačić
Yu Luo
摘要： The Cherenkov effect enables a valuable tool, known as the Cherenkov detector, to identify high-energy particles via the measurement of the Cherenkov cone. However, the sensitivity and momentum coverage of such detectors are intrinsically limited by the refractive index of the host material. Especially, identifying particles with energy above multiple gigaelectronvolts requires host materials with a near-unity refractive index, which are often limited to large and bulky gas chambers. Overcoming this fundamental material limit is important for future particle detectors yet remains a long-standing scientific challenge. Here, we propose a different paradigm for Cherenkov detectors that utilizes the broadband angular filter made from stacks of variable one-dimensional photonic crystals. Owing to the Brewster effect, the angular filter is transparent only to Cherenkov photons from a precise incident angle, and particle identification is achieved by mapping each Cherenkov angle to the peak-intensity position of transmitted photons in the detection plane. This unique property of the angular filter is exceptionally beneficial to Cherenkov detection as it enables the realization of a non-dispersive pseudo refractive index over the entire visible spectrum. Moreover, such a pseudo refractive index can be flexibly tuned to arbitrary values, including those close to unity. Our angular-selective Brewster paradigm offers a feasible solution to implement compact and highly sensitive Cherenkov detectors especially in beam lines and it can cover a wide momentum range using readily available dielectric materials.
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