On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 11:16 PM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote:
I still do not have a mental picture of how the photoelectric effect works > where a light photon that is many times larger than a single electron > nevertheless only results in the emission of one electron from a metal > surface. I need to find one of those quantum mechanics wands to wave over > any problem to find a solution. My mind still thinks in a classical sense > most of the time. > The other things you mentioned were interesting. But for the moment I'll address this point. Descending from higher to lower frequencies, nickel becomes effectively opaque to high-energy electromagnetic radiation at around 50 keV. Once nickel becomes opaque, one can imagine the normal scattering going on in an elongated, nano-scale cavity. I'm thinking of Compton scattering, stimulated emission, the photoelectric effect, and so on. But there's also the possibility of coherent x-ray scattering -- e.g., perhaps a mini x-ray laser or "super radiance," a precursor. X-rays are what are used in atomic bombs to exert pressure on fusion fuel, so their credentials for creating pressure are good. All that is needed in this case is a minimum of pressure to bring the likelihood of fusion into a realistic, but not large, range. I'm thinking of something like popcorn in a microwave. Above 50 keV, it is possible that nonlinear effects within the cavity can still yield coherent scattering, even though nickel becomes more and more transparent. An example of the kind of thing that can happen is that x-rays can bounce around for high values of Q if the grazing incidence is slight, and the coherence of the scattering can be improved if there are atoms within the cavity. There are some interesting slides that were included in an earlier email that go into more detail. Unknown (i.e., miraculous) quantum effects may make the nickel cavity even more opaque even to photons above 50 keV. But let's assume that we have to get from 8 MeV to 50 keV in a hurry. That's a decrease of 160-fold. I have no idea how to do this realistically. But that's not a huge range in the big scheme of things, especially when you consider that nano-scale electronic components can generate radio frequencies. One of the nonlinear optical effects is heterodyning. You can combine a lower frequency carrier signal with a higher frequency beat signal and get some interesting effects. Here are two graphs, before and after heterodyning of the carrier signal (x-rays) with the beat signal (a gamma; hopefully I'm doing the calculation correctly): - Before: http://bit.ly/LCMs7E - After: http://bit.ly/N5ybMy You may need Google Chrome to see the graphs -- I'm not sure. The second signal still has a lot of stuff going on, but it's also got some much more macro-scale features now as well. Perhaps it is now able to interact with the environment of the cavity. Other nonlinear effects may take over from here, such as Raman amplification, where the "signal" photon, in the x-ray range in this case, is amplified by another signal photon in the same range produced by a nonlinear interaction with the "pump" photon, in this instance the gamma. All of this is obviously highly speculative. But it does not seem to be completely crazy. Eric
